Dragon Flight
by Ar-Kaos
Summary: Ranma and crew find themselves transported to another world. All of the NWC carry scars from the backstory. Sword and sorcery high adventure with dark tones and mature themes later. Fusion with Guardians of the Flame. Regular updates.
1. Captives of sorcery

**Chapter 1**

"Are you sure you're going to be okay with this?" The girl asked, more curious than concerned. She was sat opposite a young man in the newly redecorated college cafeteria of Tokyo's most prestigious University. The girl in question was wearing a figure hugging white halter-top and navy-blue hot pant combination that seemed designed to distract, as indeed it was. The boy on the other hand was wearing an outfit designed for pure practicality. The clothes however did little to hide his physique, the boy had the body of a hardened athlete, toned and solid. Between the two of them they had the attention of nearly every other diner. A situation that only got more pronounced as Nabiki 'accidentally' dropped a chopstick and was 'forced' to lean over to fetch it.

"Nabs" Ranma chided, ignoring the twin thumps as two jocks fell off their chairs in an attempt to get a better view. Not that he wasn't more than a little distracted himself but this was an old game between the two of them.

When Ranma came to Tokyo U Nabiki had already been there for a whole year. She saw his arrival as a godsend, a way to top up her diminishing funds. She had not expected to find him so changed. At sometime during the ending of the 'Nerima Situation' something in the irrepressible martial artist had died. The boy that she had expected had been replaced by a harder, darker young man. Sitting here opposite him Nabiki was all too aware that smiles didn't come naturally to him anymore.

"And no, I don't think that I'm gonna be ok with this," he added. "Don't even know why I bleedin' well agreed" he grumped.

"Be-cause" Nabiki began slowly, "you miss the action."

"Hah" he laughed sarcastically, but a real smile crept through. Both of the flicked a glance at the new wall, one which only a few days ago Ranma had been thrown through by a marauding 'project' from Nekomi Tech. Far from quieting down Ranma's university life had been just as chaotic as his Neriman existence, but the violence had seemed to go up a notch.

"Are you saying that you aren't looking forward to seeing them all again?" Nabiki asked in mock surprise.

"If anyone else had asked…" Ranma grumbled.

"Gos" Nabiki said, as if it explained it all, and indeed it all but did. Hikaru Gosunki had been the final catalyst, the last straw for Nerima. After his 'accident' nothing was ever the same again. So the crew had broken up and Gos was left facing life in a chair.

"com'on then hunk" Nabiki ordered with mock severity, "places to go, wounds to open." Ranma just grunted… and obeyed.

O

O

O

"Done" Gos said to himself. The room was empty but for him, a few wooden chairs and a large oaken table. He had spent the last few weeks getting the place ready and had just now put the final touch to the lighting. "Just dark enough" he muttered, checking his designs were invisble. Everything was coming together, at last.

Gos sat there in his chair, waiting for them. It wasn't just that he was eager for the off, although he really was, but being early had become a habit. The problem wasn't being late, the problem was never being late. Anyone else, everyone else, got trouble for being late, but not him, not the poor feeb in the chair. It was the same everywhere, wherever he was whatever he did wrong, nobody cared, criticisms died with one look at his chair.

So Gos was early. Early to lectures, early with assignments early to lunch. Anything to pretend that…..

"Hey Gos" called a voice. It was Konatsu, the one person that broke the rules, that still treated Gos as more than the chair. "What's happening?"

"Oh you know," Gos replied, smile on his scarred face, "rolling along."

"So you haven't been 'getting up' to anything new?"

"A little tap dance, some football, you know, nothing special" Gos said, wheeling his chair back so he could reach into his bag. Konastsu took the opportunity to sit, carefully folding his American style dress as he did. He was dressed in a lovely blue number, demure and sexy at the same time. As Gos placed the final items on the table Konatsu was already touching up his lipstick.

"Stunning!" Gos said.

"Thank you" Konatsu replied, fluttering his lashes.

"I meant the fact that you can't go ten without checking your reflection out"

"Hey!" Konatsu replied, throwing a cushion. "I'm not That vain." Gos just raised his good eyebrow.

"Okay maybe I am" Konatsu replied, "but don't tell anyone" he added in a stage whisper. "Any idea when the wrecking crew will start getting here?"

"Another ten minutes or so," Gos replied, "Ryoga may take a little longer but he did set out a week ago and he has been getting better."

"really?" Konatsu replied, "Didn't you hear about the phone box?"

"The open one?" Gos replied wincing.

"Five days" Konatsu mouthed. Gos just shook his head, but deep down he knew that the fanged boy would be here. Things were just too important to be missing that piece, tonight destinies would be rewritten. Fate would bring the lost boy. Fate and Akane.

O

O

O

"Yes I'm sure this is the right door!" Akane snapped, irritation evident in every syllable. The assembled Nerimans all turned to look towards the door, and more than one rolled their eyes.

"Ah the dulcet tones of Nerima's own princess" Nabiki mocked. Beside her Ranma grunted in what had become for him a standard expression of mirth.

"And her porky companion" Ukyo added, missing the wince that crossed more than one face. "hey Nabs a hundred says Porky and Ranma are fighting inside ten"

"He had better not!" ordered the now appeared Akane, "Or so help me I'll…."

"IF I may interrupt" Gos interjected, seeing violence looming, "I Have brought you here for a reason."

"Yeah sis" Nabiki agreed, "shut it and seat it!"

"Oneesan!" Akane bubbled in surprise, rushing around the table to greet her sister with an affectionate hug..

"Whoa air.." Nabiki gasped, while trying to push her over-enthusiastic sister away.

"Sorry oneesan" Akane quickly apologised, "It's been ages how are you?" she continued, pulling up a chair next to the mercenary girl.

"Touching as this is" sneered Ukyo, "some of us do actually have things to do and would really appreciate some sleep tonight."

"Thank you Ukyo" Gos agreed, ignoring the dark look on Ranma's face, "Now if we could just get on with things-"

"What about Xian and Mousse?" Ryoga asked from the door, "I would have expected them to be included" So intent was he on finding his way to the chair in front of him he missed the sudden icy silence that descended. "I mean they were-" finally he caught on.

"Sugar" Ukyo offered, more softly than the gang were used to from the new her, "They won't be making it"

"China ain't that far" Ryoga objected, confused at the shift in tone.

"That isn't exactly the problem Hun" Ukyo added, looking directly at the lowered head of the pig tailed martial artist.

"Well what is?" Ryoga demanded, anger replacing confusion, "why won't anyone tell me anything?"

"They are dead!" Answered Ranma's voice, cold, level and final.

"What?" Ryoga gasped, suddenly deflating. He looked around the room, only nobody was meeting his eyes but Ranma, and there was something distinctly off about him. "Who? When? Did you get 'em?" he asked, only silence greeted the question.

"Me. Just before I left Nerima" Ranma answered in a dangerous tone.

"Anyway…" Nabiki interrupted, trying to break the staring contest, "You were saying Gos."

"Er Yes" Gos replied, "Where was… Ah yes. If I can just have your attention for a moment I have an announcement." Slowly all eyes moved to fix on him, some open and interested, most still reflecting the darkness the questions had brought.

"A month ago I came across an item of great power-" Gos continued, only to be interrupted by Ranma standing. The pig-tailed martial artist had clearly heard enough but as he moved past Nabiki's chair she stopped him with a gentle touch on his arm, a fact that was not missed by her sister.

Ranma looked at Nabiki and she looked back, for a few moments everyone else watched the two talk without words. Then Ranma broke the silence.

"Look Gos" he began, "I ain't ungrateful but magic is nothing but trouble."

"Ranma-" Gos began but was interrupted.

"Sorry Gos" Ranma offered, real feeling in his voice, "I know you like all this stuff but…"

"Ranma" Nabiki interjected quietly and the young man turned back to look at her. Again silence ruled, again the two of them spoke without words.

"Fine," he agreed reluctantly, "I'll stay but when this all goes to hell…."

"Thank you Ranma" Gos said.  
"Humph" Grumbled Akane, "You should have gone into drama" she added under her breath, just loud enough for it to carry. She received a mixed bag of smirks and glares, but mostly glares.

"Now the Orb of Moons, as I was saying" Gos started again, "is a very powerful artefact of mysterious origins blessed with the powers of temporal translocation. Long long ago it was used by a powerful young writer to travel to other planes but we have another use for it…"

"Gosunki I didn't understand a word of that," Ryoga admitted, "Whats it going to do?"

"It will take us back in time to a point where we can prevent-" Nabiki began only to be interrupted by Gos.

"All sorts of things that have gone wrong for us" he finished. "All opf us here have regrets, things we would rather not have had to experience. It is my firm intention to do something about that."  
"Haven't we been here before sugar?" Ukyo interrupted. "You know the mirror.."

"And we all remember how well that turned out" Akane groused.

"Ah but the orb is different" Gos began.

"Bull!" interjected Ranma quietly.

"No really " Gos asserted.

"Bull!" Ranma repeated. "I'll tell ya all what'll happen right now. He" Ranma said pointing at Gos "will start the thing up and for a while everything will seem right. Then someone else will try something and it'll start going wrong. From there it'll all go downhill, and downhill so fast we'll be lucky if any of us walk away…"

"It doesn't have to be like that" Gos argued.

"NO but it always is" Ranma disagreed, and by now several heads were nodding in agreement. "Look I really am sorry Gos but I left all this shit behind in Nerima and my life's better for it."  
"That's not what I heard" interjected Akane.

"Sure it ain't all a bed of roses, but on the flip side none of my new friends have been so much as scratched in the last year," Ranma continued.

"Like you got friends" Akane argued with heavy irony.

"What the fuck would you know sis" Nabiki retorted. "And just for once I think muscle boy might have the right answer. Lets face it boys and girls none of us have a good record with magic." Silence reigned, each Neriaman recalling magical events that had messed up their lives, from dolls to swords everyone knew at least one item that had screwed up.

"So that's it?" Gos asked, "We don't try anymore? We just accept the shit hand we've been dealt and suck it up. Sorry if I have a REALLY hard time accepting that!" he finished waving a hand at his scars and chair. In the small room the sound seemed to take forever to die.

"Guys I need your help here" he added in a quieter voice and looked up with a silent appeal written across every fibre of his being. Ranma met those eyes and knew that there really never was a choice, even if he owed Gos nothing there was still enough of the boy from Nerima left in him that he would have helped sooner or later.

"Fine" he whispered, sitting back down. Nabiki looked at him, and nodded.

"Okay" she agreed, "But we do this right. No hasty wishes, no going off half cocked, and no fighting!" she added the last just a little louder and looked all the way around the room as she said it. There were several nods of assent.

"Now Gos," she continued, "Not that we don't trust you but what do you know about this thing in the first place."

Gos swallowed, gathered himself and started. "As I said it's called the Orb of the Moons. It is powered with temporal-"

"Hey in Japanese" Ukyo interjected.

"It has the power to shift matter, sorry, things and people, through time and space. It itself is not native to this world, instead coming from a very different pace where magic is far more commonplace. With it I hope-"

"Wait a mo sugar" Ukyo interrupted, "Just where did you get this information from and for that matter where did you get your snowglobe?"

"Ah that's a long story but suffice to say I have it on the very best authority, namely my own Master of magical arts, that this is gospel truth; and I have double checked the reputed powers of the Orb through several other sources." Gos offered.

The discussion went on for nearly an hour as the crew all but interrogated Gos on every aspect of the artefact and how it was going to be used. Towards the end tiredness began to mingle with frustration and the conversation started to become heated then:

"Guys!" Konatsu interrupted, "Enough! What it comes down to is do you trust Gos?" Silence ruled. "Well?" he demanded.

"Yes sure we do" Akane agreed, naturally one of the most heated arguers.

"Then sooner or later we're going to do this right? Right?" he argued. Nods answered. "Then guys how about we move on?"

"But what about-" Akane began, only to be interrupted by Ranma's stomach. Which in turn caused a round of guffaws and an agreement to break for food.

O

O

O

An hour later they were all sat around the table once more, the lights were dimmed, all clutter cleared, and all attention focussed on the glowing ball floating and rotating slowly in front of them. In the background Gosunki was slowly chanting in a language that none could understand and that seemed to slip away before it could be properly heard.

"Orb Of the Moons we invoke thee! Open up for us, surrender your power!"

Suddenly a gut wrenching spasm went through everyone of them and the orb changed colour to a deep red.

"Not good," Ranma muttered "definitely-

Everything went dark.

The world slipped away

* * *

A/N

in response to the many folk who have been bringing this up...

yes I have taken a certain amount of writer's licence about power levels. The Nerimites will not be at full god-like power in this story, they just would not be able to interact with the people they need to, and it doesn't fit the genre in the slighhtest.

You can rationalise this anyway you like, drop in Ki powers due to temporal relocation... Magic working differently there, or just an Au where their powers were less OTT.

Simply put they are less Superhuman than the manga would have you believe, it fits better this way, like it or lump it.


	2. Camp

**Chapter 2: Camp**

"Not good" Finished Ranma. His head was thumping like a tycho drum, and his stomach doing flips that Kodachi would have been proud of. One by one his other senses started to return. First he heard the noises of others, at least one of whom was busy emptying their guts. Forcing his rebellious body to quiet he forced the world to steady enough for him to sit up and get his bearings.

Together with some other forms, presumably the others from the room he was lying in some long grass on a hill, clad only in the remnants of his former clothing. Birds circled lazily overhead, beneath fluffy clouds that blew slowly across the blue sky. The sun shone down on them. Other than them the only thing wrong with the picture was the lingering smell of ozone.

"Hot damn" he muttered, trying to still his head.

"If" came a rasped voice "you dare to breathe 'I told you so' then I will kick your ass!"

"Ucchan?"

"Yeah, its me, or at least what's left of me sugar," she replied, with pain clear in her voice.

"Anyone else up?" Ranma asked, turning slowly in an attempt to prevent the world from spinning again.

"Nah they all look sparked" Ukyo replied, "not as much practice with hangovers as us eh?"

"Ha" Ranma laughed not bothering to point out the holes in the statement. "Anything else here? Or for that matter any idea where here might be?"

"We've got bugger all sugar" Ukyo offered, "Us, one hill and some grass."

"Then how the hell did I manage to hit the only bloody feature around here?" groused Nabiki. Both others turned to look, the girl in question was propping herself up against an old western style wooden box.

Ranma was up in a shot and by her side, inspecting her head for injuries.

"Hey" she protested.

"You're bleeding" he explained, "not bad but…" she looked up at him, watched as he tore another strip off one of his favourite shirts to make a pad to apply pressure on the wound.

"Man don't move so fast" slurred Ukyo, slumping again while holding her head.

"Would you guys mind letting me die in peace?" complained Konatsu from the grass a few feet to the left. The other three looked over in time to see the cross-dresser rise shakily to his feet. "Damn, I loved that dress" he muttered, clutching at the tattered remains.

"Give us a hand up sugar?" Ukyo requested.

"Sure babe" Konatsu replied. "You know" he continued as he helped her up "there was a time when I would have given almost anything to have seen you like this."

"What, hungover?" Ukyo asked confused.

"Nearly naked" the transvestite corrected with a smile, pointedly looking at the ruins of the chef's clothes.

"Eep!" The chef exclaimed trying to cover too much with too little and then suddenly realising and good naturedly slapping the young man in front of her. The two shared a quiet smile. "And what do you mean" she interrupted as he turned to walk away, "You saw me naked plenty of times!"

"Yes but not when I was dressed the same." Konatsu argued. "Has anyone checked on the others?"

"Their chis are stable" Ranma offered, "if anything they are a little up on normal."

"You read that from over there" Ukyo asked

"Uh-huh"

"Damn I'm getting slack"

"You said it" Ranma muttered, still dabbing at Nabiki's head. "There you go Nabs" he said, "all fixed."

"What you're a doctor too?" Ukyo asked none too nicely.

"Actually he does a fair line of reiki-healing" Nabiki answered, "and his massages are to die for."

"And you would know how?" Ukyo asked, implying she already knew the answer.

"Cuz he's a pervert!" Akane swore from the floor, "and he can't keep his hands off anything in a skirt."

"Lay off princess!" Ukyo retorted. "Now what's in the box?" she asked, hastily changing the subject. All eyes shifted to the pair by the crate. Nabiki shrugged and turned to crack it open, while Ranma stood back in a wary stance.

"Loads of stuff" Nabiki said, "We got clothes, a couple of books, and a load of other junk."

"I'll give you a hand sorting it" Ukyo offered, hobbling over to the other girl.

"Hadn't we better do something about the others?" Konatsu queried.

"I't'll be dark soon" Ranma began. "I'll see about setting up some sort of camp" Ranma offered, looking at Nabiki, Nabiki nodded and off he went towards a stand of trees nearby.

Akane moved to help Ryoga, Konatsu to help Gos, which left Ukyo alone with Nabiki for the first time in years.

"So sugar," Ukyo started "how long's that been going on?"

"What?" Nabiki asked, placing a bundle of clothes on the grass.

"You and Ranma?" Ukyo replied, starting to help sort.

"Ha" Nabiki joked, "it isn't like that"

"No?"

"No," Nabiki explained, picking out a Chinese style machete and laying it down next to the clothes.

"So…" Ukyo prompted.

"You missed quite a lot when you left Nerima." Nabiki began, with a hint of reproach in her voice. "The wedding changed very little indeed, the fights, random suitors, all of it went on regardless. Then 'boom' everything came to a head, some really nasty stuff started happening. By the time the dust settled things had gone too far to ever be fixed."

"So what's this got to do with you banging Ranma?" Ukyo queried, an edge to her voice. Nabiki stopped and favoured her with a very cold glare.  
"You know him better than that" she said coldly, "or at least you used to."

"What's that supposed to mean?" the chef demanded, temper rising.

"It is supposed to mean that he really could have used a friend" Nabiki explained, "especially considering Shampoo. And nobody was there for him. Nobody, of all the people who Claimed to care for him, nobody gave a damn. By the time I got home on summer break he was a mess."

"So you decided to help him out of the goodness of your heart?" Ukyo sneered.

"Something like that" Nabiki replied, going back to sorting.

"And now he just happens to follow you around like some sort of lost puppy," Ukyo continued, unwilling to let it rest.

"Ukyo, just drop it okay"

"What I don't get is why you out up with it?" Ukyo needled, going back to sorting herself. After a while Nabiki finally stopped and turned to the other girl.

"Because besides being the most honest, caring, honourable man I have ever met I owe him more than I can ever repay. And Tendo Nabiki always pays her debts!" Ukyo matched looks with her for a few moments then turned back to the crate, perhaps remembering less cynical times.

O

O

O

As the sun started to set the crew had relocated to the stand of trees nearby. Ranma had rigged a couple of bashers for shelter during the night and started a fire for warmth. Ukyo was currently cooking a couple of hares over the flame that she had caught earlier. The others were busy making the camp as homey as possible, all apart from Akane, who was still nursing the sleeping Ryoga, and Nabiki who was just sorting the last of the gear from the crate.

"Guys I just found something here" Nabiki called. Everyone turned to look and Nabiki held up a letter. "Its addressed to 'Gos and friends'"

"Er guys" Ranma interrupted, "sorry to interrupt but we have another problem" he finished, pointing at the sky. Everyone followed his finger.

"Whoo, stars, so what?" sneered Ukyo, not looking properly.  
"They shouldn't look like that should they?" Konatsu hazarded.

"I've travelled nearly as far as fang boy there, maybe further, and I have never seen a sky like that." The others looked agaion and sure enough not only were the stars completely wrong for what they were used to some were also moving.

"Is that one blue?" Ukyo asked.

"Uh-huh" agreed Akane.  
"And that one's red isn't it?" she continued.

"Uh-huh" agreed Konatsu, "and look at that one, its puce! Is'nt that pretty?"

"That is just freaky" Nabiki stated. "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore Toto."

"huh?" Ranma questioned. Nabiki waved off the query and pointed again.

"I can see lights." She said.

"Yeah so can we all!" Ukyo retorted.

"No!" responded Nabiki "not that kind of lights, those" she finished pointing again. Everyone followed her hand and one by one they could make out a different pattern of lights.

"Are those houses?" Konatsu asked hopefully.

"yep" Ranma asserted, "but no streetlights"

"How can you possibly know that?" Ukyo asked, somewhere between doubtful and impressed.

"Long years of experience" Ranma offered, with more than a trace of bitterness.

"We should check it out tomorrow" Ukyo stated. Ranma shook his head and went to go back to trimming the firewood. "What?" she demanded.  
"Nothing" he replied, unconvincingly.

"Spit it out Saotome!" she ordered.  
"If we really want to check it out night time is better" he replied quietly.

"Why?" she demanded.  
"Suppose that they're hostile to outsiders…." Nabiki filled in, "I for one would much rather find out when we can still run and hide."

"Fine" Ukyo agreed, far from happily.

"But I really think you need to hear this first" Nabiki said, turning back to the letter and tilting it to shine the firelight onto the surface.

"_Dear Gosunki and friends,_

_First of all let me apologise for the deception and assure you that my apprentice had no part in it. He is as much a victim of my deceit as the rest of you.  
By now you should have found the few supplies I have been able to offer you. These represent years of careful study into translation through the veil. Amongst the rest you will find a few items of special interest, a book of spells that I assure you is authentic, along with a primer of the way the weave works in the land you have found yourselves; a selection of weapons that it is my firm hope will discourage trouble; and a sack of coinage that will ensure your transition is easier than you might expect. The horn will produce food, water and wine on demand. There are also clothes and footwear that will assist you with assimilating into the local populace.  
By now I suspect you will all be wondering why I have done this to you._

"Damn skippy" Ukyo interjected.

"_The answer is fairly complex but suffice it to say that I am not a native of the world you knew as home. In fact I am an exile from the world you now find yourselves in. And I long to return.  
On the reverse of this sheet you will find a map to an artefact known as "The World Gate." Not only does this represent your only way home but also the end of my own sojourn in the wilderness.  
I promise each and every one of you that when you open the way for me I will reward you in ways that you can never dream. Curses will be cancelled, riches bestowed, blessings beyond your wildest dreams will all be in my power to grant._

_yours sincerely_

_Dr Srthur Deighton _

"Well he can kiss my ass if he thinks I'm helping his over used bent-ass shunt hole!" Ukyo swore heatedly. Konatsu coughed pointedly. "Sorry hun." She apologised "product of the repression generation."

"I don't think we have a choice anyway" Nabiki interjected.

"How do ya figure" Ukyo demanded.

"This 'World Gate' is apparently the only way out for us," Nabiki explained.

"Assuming he's not lying" Ukyo retorted, "Its not like he's fed us shite before afterall…"  
"He has to guess we'll check" Nabiki replied, refusing to be drawn.  
"How exactly?" Ukjyo demanded, "what's the chances any of us are gonna understand a fucking world the local piss-ants say?"

"This isn't the time guys" Konatsu interrupted.

"When is?" demanded the fuming chef rounding on the cross-dresser

"Calm down" ordered a steady level voice that talked straight to their guts.

"Ranma?" Nabiki queried, only just identifying the voice.

"You're tired, hungry and freaked," he explained "this way only leads to blood and bruises."

"Well I never," Ukyo sneered back "Since when have you been the peacemaker?" she demanded.

"Since I had to kill one of my friends with my bare hands," he replied with cold sincerity. That made Ukyo shut up.

O

O

O


	3. Town

**Chapter 3: Patrakas.**

"Anything?" Konatsu whispered. He was lying amongst the wheat in a field, dressed in a scavenged set of clothing. Beside him Ranma was hunkered down. Both of them had just finished a reconnaissance near the entrance to the small town that the group had spotted from the camp. It had turned out to be a little larger than they had guessed, with part of the town hidden behind the walls and in a small hill fold. That part had turned out to be an external river wharf.

"Nothing" Ranma agreed. "The place is locked up tight, and if there is an easy way in I can't see it, even the river gate is sealed."

"There's still Ukyo" Konatsu offered hopefully.

"Failing that we'll just have to go over and hope nobody's watching," Ranma mused.

"Can't you do that whole star-cloth thing?" Konatsu queried.

"I don't do that anymore" Ranma replied strongly. To Konatsu's querying look he added "Long story but let's just say my pops was right this once." Konatsu nodded.

"Guys?" came Ukyo's harsh whisper, "You out there?" The two young men looked at each other and crept off to meet the errant chef. "There you are!" she exclaimed. "You could have chosen a more memorable spot! I've been looking for you two for hours!" Neither man bothered to contradict her. "Anyway" she said, a little too loudly, "I found a way in!" she finished proudly.

"Lead on" Konatsu waved, and soon the three of them were sneaking off through the fields.

Ten long minutes later they were looking at a break in the high wall that surrounded the town.

"It's a drain!" Konatsu noted, less than happy.

"A water drain!" Ranma noted, even less happy.

"Uh-huh" Ukyo enthused, "cool eh. It'll take us right into town without being seen. There is a gate but nobody's bothered to close it!"

"We do have to get in!" Konatsu observed. Ranma only nodded resentfully.

O

O

"So we're in" Ukyo observed. "It may not have been that pleasant but we are in."

"Not that pleasant?" Konatsu asked, "That wasn't a drain it was a flaming sewer! I was crawling through semi-liquid turd! No offence Ukyo but that idea sucked!"

"Did you have a better one?" Ukyo demanded.

"Guys!" Ranma interrupted, wringing out her clothes and trying not to think about what she had just crawled through.

"What!" the other two demanded in stereo.

"Hush!" he suggested emphatically. "I ain't never known anyone with a fence that likes havin' it crossed…" the other two ducked their heads sheepishly. "Now lets get on with it."

"Back here in an hour?" Ukyo checked, the other two nodded agreement and they rapidly split up, heading for the shadows and out into the sleeping night.

O

O

Ranma went to work, leaping from rooftop to rooftop until he reached a suitable vantage point. In this case the overhang of the murder holes under the garrison tower. The place was hardly large but it did represent the only permanent presence of the forces of law and order, and Ranma had learnt a long time ago that policemen were often the best source of information on a new area, especially when they didn't know they were being overheard. Moments later to his immense relief he not only found he could hear a conversation from above but also that he could understand them.

"What's the new girl like?" asked the first voice in what seemed an odd mix of a Korean and a Chinese accent.

"She's clean," the second replied, "ugly as sin but clean"

"It's the whole elven thing man" the first observed "even when they're bowing an' scrapin' they still look down on yer."

"An when yer humpin em yers just end up yer know regrettin' it."

"I know what yer mean"

"Them dark ones is a little better but not much"

"yeah but you see the way they live"

By now Ranma was already disgusted and really did not need to hear any more gutter talk, so instead he came up with a way to change the subject.

"Whassat?" the first asked.

"Sounded like it came from the wall!" the second observed.

"Ah well tough on them if it did!" the first laughed, "The firefield in on tonight, they gonna get deep fried!" the man's laugh was not friendly.

Ranma cued them several more times with more stones, and tricks ranging from bird calls to ghost noises, before he had got all the information they were going to give. Then he left, as silently as he came. He had a couple more stops to do and very little time to do them.

O

O

O

For ten minutes Ukyo stayed on mission then something went wrong, she found a pub. It was a warm looking place, echoing with laughter. Outside it, above the door, hung a brightly painted blue boar. It wasn't just that she was getting cold and that there was a fire inside, it wasn't just that she was badly in need of a beer, no the decision to go in was also in everyone's best interest, honest.

After a quick wringing out and an attempt at making herself presentable Ukyo steeled herself and headed for the door. Even before it opened she could feel the change in temperature inside. She pushed the door open and immediately she was immersed in a sea of noise, the room was full of western looking townsfolk wearing ancient garb similar to her own enjoying themselves. They were seated around small round tables on western style stools and chairs. Several were smoking all of them were drinking what looked like a form of beer from a variety of tankards. For a moment all eyes turned to the door but as Ukyo entered they turned away again, she was apparently normal enough.

She made her way forward, threading through the tables of locals, and, mindful of her recent swim, found herself a deserted corner. When a girl in a very rough looking dress approached she just held up a finger and hoped that would be normal enough. Again her luck held and the girl went away apparently to get her a drink.

This gave Ukyo time to check how the others were paying, as she suspected the coins she had from the bag earlier were much higher denomination than what were being used here, it seemed they were more than a little rich.

She settled in to have a few drinks, paying with the smallest coin she had, and trying to subtly eavesdrop on the conversations around her. She allowed a brief smile for the other two who were no doubt doing things the hard way.

O

O

Konatsu went about his recce somewhat differently. Using the skills he had learnt growing up he broke into one of the larger houses and proceeded to search it from head to toe, Gaining his information by pure stealth.

Once he was done there he chose another house and repeated the process for comparison.

By the time he was finished there he had just enough time to get back to the rendezvous as subtly as he had left it.

As he arrived in the area he found a now male Ranma crouched on a tiled roof overlooking the rendezvous. "Hiya" he whispered, not expecting to take the man by surprise.

"Ukyo's not here yet" the man whispered in reply.

"She's got time," Konatsu answered, not wanting to worry yet. So they waited. And waited.

"Where is she?" Ranma demanded of the empty street.

"She never used to be this bad, not unless she'd been drinking," Konatsu tried. Then the penny dropped. "She wouldn't have…would she?"

"Damn" Ranma whispered, remembering just how bad Ukyo had got before she left. "We'll have to split up again, find her and bring her back." Konatsu nodded and jumped away, Ranma took the time to shake his head once and then took off in another direction.

O

O

O

Ukyo was happy. The ale was bitter, young, full flavoured, and surprisingly strong. Unfortunately it was a lot stronger than Ukyo was either used to or expecting. The result was the room was starting to blur by even Ukyo's second flagon. By her third Ukyo had not only lost track of time but was also starting to lose her connection to the real world.

Suddenly someone was sitting at her table. Ukyo struggled to focus. It was a man. Definitely a man. He was richly dressed. Jewellery. Definitely jewellery. Behind him were two other men, yep definitely two.

"Ohiyo" Ukyo slurred, bowing slightly.

"Ah Young man" the new visitor started, "I see you're not too drunk to realise what sort of trouble you're in"

"Trouble?" Ukyo slurred. The man placed something shiny on the table, Ukyo tried to focus on it.

"Where Did You get the coin Thief?" the man demanded.

"Coin? Thief?" Ukyo slurred looking up at him and the down at the shiny thing again. The man sighed dramatically, then grabbed Ukyo by the back of her hair and slammed her head into the table.

"You stink thief!" the man shouted, "You stink and you're foreign! There is no way a man such as you could have earned this coin fairly, so where did you steal it from?" the man punctuated his demands by banging Ukyo's head off the table repeatedly.

Suddenly his hand was stopped, the smelly boy in front of him had somehow managed to catch his arm in mid-movement. From nowhere a shiny steel blade appeared in the person's hand, a shiny blade whose point was pressed into the noble's gut.

"I am not a thief!" the filthy wet person said, "I did not steal the coin!" she added standing up and forcing the man to his feet, "and I am not a boy!" With that she flung him back into his bristling bodyguards. It was only then that she noticed that their coats were shiny dully in the firelight and that both were armed to the teeth.

"Oh shit!" she swore, and then the fight started for real.

As Ukyo flicked her chair into the face of the guard on the left, the guard on the right drew his blade in a swift arc aimed for Ukyo's belly. The chef dodged, and fell, in her drunken state she had completely forgotten about the table she had been sitting at.

Fire blossomed along her back, a burning line of flame running from her shoulder blade to the small o her back. Even in her drunken state the chef could have sworn she felt the blade scrape along the back of her ribs.

She rolled left falling onto the firestep. The guard's crimson stained blade lashed out again, aiming for her face. Again she dodged, rolling left she bumped into a stand, the pokers for the fire. Even as Ukyo lifted the bronze poker to her defence the guard stabbed again, this time the blade bit home, neatly piercing into her thigh. She screamed and lashed out, the poker tore through the guard's cheek, stripping it to the bone. The man staggered back, bumping into his comrades, suddenly Ukyo had a moment's breather. She jumped up and ran for the door, ignoring the flaming protest of her leg.

A local stood, trying to do the right thing, Ukyo knocked him flat with a flying elbow. The man's face went sideways in a crimson spray of blood, spittle and teeth. Through the haze of pain the door appeared, the chef didn't try to stop, instead barrelling straight through the door, demolishing into splinters.

The cold air hit her like a hammer blow. For a few precious heartbeats Ukyo lay there on the floor, completely disorientated, allowing her precious lifeblood to leak into the road. Then she was up and moving, limping for her life.

"Thief!" shouted a voice from behind her, followed by the sound of running feet. Ukyo turned at the last moment, ducking and spinning. What she saw did not fill her with hope, both guards were up and chasing and the population of the inn had come out to help, in the centre of them the noble was wrestling with some sort of wooden contraption. She lashed out, the lead guard caught the poker across his knee, snapping it. Ukyo lifted into a classical upwards strike. Any other time it would have worked, but tonight the chef's leg just wouldn't take it. Her leg buckled, the move failed, the tables turned. Suddenly Ukyo was looking up at the silvery streak of a descending blade. She rolled, just not fast enough, pain and fire blossomed across her face.

Ukyo finished her roll, and tried to find the energy to go on. It wasn't there, she had lost and she knew it. From the ground she looked up at the pitiless rictus on the guards face. In his eyes she saw no pity, no reprieve and as his arm cocked back she waited for the sword's final embrace.

It never came. From out of nowhere came a streak of blue. The guard bounced sideways, thrown from her vision. Less than a heartbeat later she heard the thump and crack of the blow that had thrown him clear. Instead of the guard there now stood the figure of a young woman. A woman standing in an all too familiar martial stance.

"'Natsu?" Ukyo murmured, between confusion and relief.

"Run idiot!" the crossdresser commanded, and Ukyo found the strength, she got up and ran. Behind her she heard the sounds of battle being joined, Konatsu against the mob.

"Back off!" commanded a voice, and Ukyo turned to see the crowd back away from the former ninja. The noble had his contraption raised, too late Konatsu spotted it. The sound of a spring released filled her ears. Konatsu stopped still, coughed, and fell to his knees. The last thing Ukyo saw of him was the stupefied look on his face as he dribbled blood and stared at the shaft sticking out of his chest.

In her ears she could hear someone screaming, she was far too far gone to know it was her.

She staggered on into the darkness, all too aware that the mob would soon be baying for her blood, and that she would never get away. However the chef was not going to disobey her friends last command. So she ran, ignoring the fire, ignoring the way the darkness crept in from the edge of her vision, ignoring the burning tears that cascaded down her cheeks.

Suddenly strong arms wrapped her in an embrace and the familiar presence of her one-time fiancée filled her world.

"Ucchan?" he queried as he lifted her from the floor and bounded away from street level.

"'Natsu" she coughed, "they-"

"You need help" Ranma interrupted.

"No, help-" she muttered before finally losing the last of her strength and slipping into unconsciousness.

"Damn!" Ranma swore and made the decision. He ran. Back at the camp there were 'healing draughts' and Ranma had seen enough computer games to know that they might be the chef's only hope.

With his childhood friend's lifeblood leaking out across his body Ranma ran. The town gate appeared in front of them and Ranma didn't slow. Wrapping himself in his chi he ploughed straight through the sally gate. As he did lightning arced, clashing with his aura. He felt the burn, felt his muscles contract, and kept running.

Hooking left he ran along a wet irrigation ditch before leaping away and hurtling up the hill.

As he ran he fed his chi into the cooling form of his friend. Desperately trying to ignore the details of her worsening plight and stretching out his muscles to gain that last ounce of speed from his legs.


	4. The wharf

**Chapter 4: The Wharf  
**

"What the hell happened?" Nabiki demanded. Ranma had just leapt into camp at a rate of knots carrying the dangerously pale Ukyo and demanded the healing draughts. It had taken Nabiki a matter of moments to calm down from the shock, by which time she had also noticed the vast quantity of blood soaking her friend.

"Healing stuff now!" Ranma repeated, breathing hard. Nabiki obeyed, finding a bottle and bringing it to Ranma. He looked at it once and then back at her with mute appeal.

"No stud," she answered, "I've got even less idea how to use it than you do!"

"Pour some on the wounds" rasped a voice from the darkness, "and the rest in her mouth."

"She'll drown" Ranma argued.

"You can't drown in this stuff," Gos replied in the same raspy tone, pulling back the blanket that was serving as a door to his shelter, "Trust me it doesn't work like that."

"Fine" Nabiki agreed and did as she was told, "I'll try not to remember the last time you talked about trust."

The reddish liquid had an instant effect of the comatose chef, the wounds visibly sealed and colour immediately began to return to her.

"Whoa" Ranma remarked.

"You can say that again" Nabiki agreed.

"It worked?" Gos asked.

"You mean you weren't sure?" Ranma demanded.

"Did we have an option?" he replied. Nabiki stilled Ranma with a light touch on his arm.

"Not now" she said quietly, "Ukyo need you." Ranma looked down to see the young chef now apparently sleeping soundly. He looked over to the shelters and back to Nabiki who pointed one out, he nodded and went to lay his friend out to sleep.

"What happened here?" he asked quietly of middle Tendo as he came back. He had discovered a large burnt patch on the floor next to the basher, and nowhere near the campfire.

"Gos had an accident and fried some of our gear" Nabiki explained.

"Fried?"

"Whoosh" Nabiki mimed rising flames.

"Whoa" Ranma exclaimed, still quietly "what got done?"

"Clothes, most of our food, a couple of books, the letter and the magic horn" Nabiki replied. "Gos feels really bad about it. Not that he shouldn't but…"

"Ah?" Ranma said, unsure what was expected of him.

"My darling sister was this close to belting him for it," Nabiki explained holding up thumb and forefinger. Ranma shook his head sadly.

"I got worse news" he began, while adjusting the fire, "we may have to move on."

"What?" Nabiki asked, "and where's Konatsu."

"Things in town went really badly," he explained, "Konatsu….didn't make it," he finished lifting his head to look her in the face. Nabiki saw the look, and saw the pain.

"How long have we got?" she asked, reaching out a comforting hand.

"If they come in force," Ranma replied, squeezing her hand, "mid-morning at the earliest, otherwise…" he finished with a shrug.

"Can you…tell me, about it?" Nabiki said hesitatingly.

"We got there safe enough" Ranma began and then went on to tell what he knew of the mess that had cost Konatsu his life. By the time he was finished the pre-dawn light was already appearing over the horizon.

"What do you suggest?" Nabiki asked as he finished with his arrival. For a moment Ranma was silent.

"I don't know" he replied at last, "I ain't the responsible one. How the hell should I know?"

"Ranma" Nabiki said, calming him with a gentle hand. "You're the only one of us with experience of being on the run- No hear me out! – I know you aren't fond of decisions but we need you"

"Nabs" Ranma replied, "Everything I touch turns to shit. You really don't want me-" he was interrupted by an open hand slap.

"No!" Nabiki ordered, trying not to show how much her hand hurt, "You are not going down that path now! Like it or not we need you and now! Take some time to plan if you must but don't you dare flake on me now!" Ranma just looked at her stunned for a few moments, then slowly nodded. He stood up and began to pace, slowly snapping a twig again and again.

"Will you guys can it!" demanded a voice from one of the bashers, "some of us are trying to die quietly!"

"Ucchan" Ranma exclaimed, moving to look only to be stopped by Nabiki.

"No" she ordered, "you plan, I help Ukyo!" Ranma hesitated for a moment then went back to pacing. Nabiki pulled the 'curtain aside and looked in on their friend. Aside from the liberal covering of now congealed blood Ukyo was looking fine, her colour was good and she was awake.

"How are you?" Nabiki asked, dipping a cloth in some water to clean the chef up a little.

"I feel like shit" Ukyo said honestly. "Every part of me hurts like sandpaper toilet roll." Nabiki smirked, figuring that if the woman could joke she couldn't be that bad.

"Can you stand?"

"I tried opening my eyes and that was bad enough," the chef confessed in a serious tone. "Nabs" she continued, "I'm really sorry I didn't mean to..."

"To what?" Nabiki asked sternly, "get drunk? Get into a fight? Drag the rest of us in? Get Konatsu killed?" Ukyo's face drained of colour. And her mouth worked without making a sound.

"Ucchan" Nabiki threatened, "if you Ever let us down like that again…" Then she left, not staying to watch the chef's tears.

"That was a little harsh, wasn't it" Gos asked. He was sitting by the fire, having obviously dragged himself out from his shelter. Nabiki just fixed him with a glare. "Whoa, sorry I breathed!" he muttered, dropping his face back towards the fire.

"We're leaving" came Ranma's voice, "Now."

"You've got a plan?" Nabiki aksed. The pig tailed man nodded a reply.

"But we need to get moving now!" Nabiki nodded once and set to work waking the others.

O

o

Half an hour later all trace of their camp was gone, even the ashes of the fires buried. Gos was on Ranma's back, Ukyo slung on a makeshift stretcher between Akane and the very disorientated lost boy. Even Nabiki had a pack stuffed full of gear.

"Why're we going now?" Ryoga asked for the umpteenth time. He had only awoken for the first time since arrival during the middle of the night and was yet to properly catch up on their circumstances.

"Shut it and move pig boy" Ranma demanded.

"RANMA!" Nabiki shouted, "you are not helping!

"Ryoga" she continued, " for the time being you're just going to have to trust us." The reddening lost boy calmed and nodded. They were off.

Ranma led them at a blistering pace along a dog-leg route across the pastureland towards the far side of the town.

"Are we going where I think we're going?" Nabiki gasped out, having caught up with Ranma. He nodded.

"We'll never outrun them on foot" he insisted, "Our best hope is the river. It's fast flowing, salty and there was more than sea ship tied up lat night. If we can catch the tide we can be away before anyone is any the wiser."

"And if they have been told to watch for us?" Nabiki asked, more than a little concerned.

"I'm counting on the sailors here being like the ones at home," Ranma offered, "useless in the morning before sailing. Even if they were told I'm hoping it won't be making sense yet."

"I can help" Gos said from Ranma's back. The two of them tried to look at him, an act which caused Ranma to spin a full three sixty.

"Go on," Nabiki requested.

"I'll cast a glamour to stop people associating us with things," he explained.

"You can do that?" she asked.

"Not sure how good it'll be" he explained, "but in theory at least its pretty simple providing there aren't too many of them."

"How?" Nabiki asked.

"My mentor" Gos answered, "taught me all sorts of things that I never thought would work. It seems they do here, as last night's accident proves," he finished ruefully.

"We need to pick up the pace" Ranma observed. Then louder he shouted to the others, "We have to go faster!" Nabiki and Ukyo offered twin groans.

O

O

Less than an hour after Dawn the small group were arriving at the docks. In direct contrast to the night before the wharf was a hive of activity. All three of the ships moored were obviously preparing for departure, mostly loading large bails of wool. Gos's eyes were tightly closed as he weaved his glamour, but the strain was already making him sweat.

"I'll handle the negotiations" Nabiki said, catching her breath "get the others out of sight, and Ranma" she said more quietly, "try to keep them out of trouble!"

Ranma led the others to the back of the most rundown building, one he had scouted the night before. It turned out to be an unused barn. The simple chain lock didn't delay them by more than a heartbeat. The interior was dark and cool in the early morning gloom, the group soon made themselves comfortable. Ryoga wordlessly positioned himself by on door and Ranma the other. Akane just lay down next to Ukyo and Gos to rest.

"I can't believe you are just letting her go out there oh her own" she complained, "what if something bad happens to her."

"Yeah Ranchan" Ukyo agreed, "the princess is right for once, hadn't you better watch Nabiki's back."

"She knows what she's doing" Ranma replied, "and I only cramp her style," he finished somewhat ruefully, the voice of experience.

"So we just wait?" demanded Akane.

"Yeah we wait," Ranma agreed, "and we trust her to do her thing."

"Hah," Akane sneered.

"If you have a better idea then share it," Ranma said through gritted teeth.

"Otherwise belt up!" Ukyo finished. For once Akane did as she was told, but it probably had more to do with fatigue than sense.

"Geez hon," Ukyo commented, "You aren't sounding too good. Too much sukiyaki?" Akane just glared, only too aware of how unfit she was feeling just then. Even Nabiki had managed better than her; sure she hadn't been carrying anybody else but still.

O

O

"There are six of us," Nabiki explained, "we need transport downriver." Behind her back thr mercenary Tendo clenched her crossed fingers tight. This was the last ship, and their last hope. All the others had flat out refused and Nabiki was fairly sure that the second ship captain had sent a runner for the guard. She had run out of time and options.

"You in a hurry Lass" the big captain asked. He was a big man, bald and heavily tanned. The sea had left its mark on every inch of him.

"I'll tell you the truth" she gambled, "we've run into a little trouble with the locals and its getting a lot less friendly around here." It wasn't a complete gamble, she had already spotted more than one of the man's crew were sporting fresh injuries. It was a fair guess that he wouldn't be well disposed to locals.

"I guessed as much" he smiled, "And I would like to help you but…"

"We can make it worth your while" Nabiki interrupted, "name your price," the hook was trailed.

"I'm not really looking for passengers" he replied, and Nabiki heard the 'kaching' of success in the word 'really.' All that remained was the haggling.

"But I guess I could be persuaded" he said with a leer. A chill went through Nabiki, she had suspected this of him from the moment he laid eyes on her.

"Oh come'on lass" he continued, "It won't be that bad, who knows you might even enjoy it." Nabiki looked around, searching for another option. Instead she spotted a troop of soldiers coming down from the town.

"Look Captain Ganess" she said, he voice dropping. "Things are about to get a whole lot hotter, and I know you don't want that. We need a price now. In return my boys will load the rest of this gear faster than any of your damaged crew, and we will all catch the tide!" She didn't have a clue about the tides around here but knew they ruled the lives of the average sailor and trusted the rest to luck.

"Thirty lions apiece" the man said, Nabiki didn't need to know the local exchange rate to know the price was robbery but she also knew what he would add to the price if she haggled.

"Done!" she asserted, nodding and sticking out a hand. He followed suit before he even realised what he was doing. "And sealed!" she added before he could demur. She took one step back and put her fingers to lips before whistling twice.

O

O

"Ranma heard the first blast and tensed, then the second and relaxed. "Time to go" he said, moving over to Gos.

"Huh?" Ryoga said, "How do you-"

"Its like a dog whistle" Akane offered spitefully, "she calls and he goes running!" Ranma went still for a moment and then carried on, ignoring the girl.

Together the posse headed out, moving just slow enough not to attract too much attention. Gos was once again muttering words of power, and within a matter of seconds he was sweating like a pig.

"Can you go a bit slower?" Gos rasped in between laboured recitations.

"I don't think that's such a good idea" Ranma replied, spotting the soldiers talking to a ship captain further along the wharf. "Ukyo?"

"Yeah?"

"You need to walk now" Ranma told her, "get Akane to help if you need to.

"Ryoga" he continued, "You take Gos."

"What are you going to do?"

"Stop the guards!" he said determinedly. Then Ukyo screamed and fell, her damaged leg buckling. "Damn" he swore. "I think everyone should run" he suggested. For a moment they all dithered then they took off for the boat following Ranma.

As Ranma arrived Nabiki suddenly found her arms full of Gosunki. Ranma was already turning when she stopped him.

"Ranma," she said urgently, "The captain needs the rest of that stack aboard."

"Damn" he swore looking over his shoulder and then at the pile. "Help Gos aboard." She nodded and he leapt over to the bails of wool. The fact that he did it over a fifteen foot gap didn't even register with anyone who knew him.

By the time the others got there Ranma already had two bails lifted. "Pig-boy, catch" he shouted. Ryoga had just enough time to settle Ukyo onto the deck when the first two wool bails landed in his arms. Each one weighed a fair chunk of a ton and had just cleared a twenty five-foot gap. The decking squeaked with each impact. Ryoga had only heartbeats between each bail as one by one Ranma lofted them and he caught them and threw them into position, the crew immediately got the idea and once their mouths agreed to shut the did the final adjustments.

"Wow?" Ganess murmured. Nabiki just couldn't resist it.

"Told you so."

"You got many like that where you come from?" he asked, still not quite believing what he saw.

"You should see them when they get into a pissing contest," Nabiki laughed. As Ranma sailed the last two over the guards finally managed to reach the end of the pier that Ganess's ship was moored to.

"You are all under arrest!" cried the leader. He was a tall blond man, well dressed and carrying a drawn rapier, which he was waving fro emphasis. All went still.

"I have felt your presence!" interrupted a voice from the pit itself.

"Who are you?" demanded the noble.

"Who I am doesn't matter nearly as much as who my friend was!" Ranma growled, starting to walk slowly towards the group.

"Let me guess" sneered the noble, "You are that fag I shot's butt boy. Well if you are looking for your 'friend' you'll find him hanging from the gatehouse! Ha!"

"Wrong answer!" Ranma rasped as he arrived. The guards were unsure what to do about this man who, despite being unarmed and unarmoured, was approaching them with confidence. Nevertheless they attacked.

A snap kick from the waist lifted the first off his feet, stretching his spine and throwing him a clear ten feet. The same foot wrapped around and caught the second in the nape of his neck, driving him face-first into the floor. The third found himself thrown over his wrist, and as he impacted into the wall of the nearby warehouse he was still wondering how the man parried his blade with his bare forearm. Ranma ducked the next's overhand swing and launched an uppercut into his diaphragm just below his sternum. He flew back hitting one of his compatriots in the throat with his outflung forearm. The final few lasted no longer, each one ruthlessly beaten down by the unstoppable martial artist walking through their midst.

"Shit" Ganness's first mate swore, he had come forward tom report the cargo stowed and had suddenly found himself watching a spectacle of applied force.

"You can say that again," Ganess added.

"This is not going to be pretty" Nabiki muttered, wincing slightly.

Tyrine ip Patrakas was scared, a feeling he hadn't had since the day his father finally died. Last night he was on top of the world, not only had he managed to kill two upstart peasants but the weird one had been carrying a small fortune. But now everything was wrong. He brought up his blade, more out of reflex than thought, into the classic high guard position.

As if shooing a fly Ranma dismissed the noble's puny attempt at defence. He followed up with a closed fist strike to the sternum. Tyrine's world became painful and dark. He awoke seconds later to find himself on his knees dribbling blood.

"You" the demon was saying, "you will ensure my friend is buried with all ceremony!" The man on the floor, a loyal retainer, nodded till it appeared his head would fall off.

"traitor" Tyrine tried to say, instead it came up in pink froth. Then the fog came in and the last scion of an ancient family died.


	5. Sea and Stars

**Chapter 5: A night of sea and stars.**

The sea Sprite gently lifted and settled in the swell of the Cirric sea. In the bows stood the well wrapped form of a diminutive red-head. Ranma had come up here as the sun came down, and was staring out into the deepening night.

She took a swig of the waterskin next to her, grimacing at the leathery taste. They were two days out of Patrakas and the going had been easy. For Ranma it had been a real trial, between sea-sickness and the sudden gulf that had seemed to open between him and the others it had become a really bad trip. Only now were the last traces of sea-sickness starting to fade, making the gap all the larger.

Behind him Ranma heard the arrival of some sandalled feet, the accompanying aura was instantly recognisable. "Hiya Pig-boy," he needled, "Come to fight?"

The lost boy laughed, but there was nervousness there, "Maybe later. On the other hand it was you who got us out of there and god knows I couldn't of done the same, so maybe we'll call it quits for the moment."

"Fine" Ranma said, relaxing not at all. "I suppose I should thank you too," she finished, backing away from the rail.

"Huh?"

"At least you're talking to me," she said, "the most I've got from the others is a grunt and an excuse. And the crew are even worse."

"Ranma" Ryoga said, "It is sort of your fault." Ranma turned to glare, daring the lost boy to continue.

"That town was hard enough, what with Konatsu..." Ryoga began slowly, "then you went and..."  
"What?" Ranma demanded quietly, "I did what?"

"You killed him Ranma," Ryoga said, "you beat him down and killed him. The Ranma we all knew would never have done that."

"Saffron" Ranma retorted.

"Saffron was different!" Ryoga insisted, "that man was no challenge he..."

"Had killed someone I cared about" Ranma interrupted

"Yeah, but"

"But what Rypga? Ranma insisted, "I should have let him walk away, I should have turned the other cheek? Sorry pig-boy that ain't an option."

"That's what's scaring us Ran-man," The Ranma we knew forgave and forgot, "you're changed and its just not right."

"Fine!" Ranma growled, "Now you're done telling me how much of a jerk I am."

"It isn't just that," Ryoga continued, gaining steam, "it's a whole load of things. Like the way you're treating Akane."

"Akane?" Ranma growled, remembering how she had looked at him today.

"You've barely said a word to her since she arrived at Gos's," Ryoga explained. "There was a time when you would cross heaven and Earth for her and now you won't even look at her. Her sister whistles and you come running but you won't even look Akane in the eye." Ryoga said taking a step forwards, "its hurting her. A lot. And she deserves better."

"What's it to you P..." Ranma began, then suddenly the penny dropped. He had felt something different about his friend's aura,and that of the youngest Tendo and now he began to place the pieces together.. "You...and Akane..."

Ryoga saw the change, saw the subtle shift of Ranma's feet, and gulped down the sudden lump in his throat. It didn't take a rocket scientist to guess what he had just worked out. "Ran-man. Let me explain..."

"Try!" Ranma growled.

"Wqe didn't mean it to happen," Ryoga said, "she just needed..."  
"What P-chan?" Ranma said advancing with venom, gone were the friendly needles, now there was anger and insult.

"She was scared and needed.." Ryoga started, backing up still further.

"Needed what exactly?" The pigtailed martial artist growled.

Ryoga could see this was getting nowhere, and started searching for a way out. Nothing. He was only too aware of the gap that had developed between his and his friend's skill levels and the arena...

"Why don't you tell me Pig boy?" Ranma needled, "tell me just what made you think I wouldn't care?"

"Fine" Ryoga accepted, "You want a fight, then fine, we'll fight. But it's a long swim to shore and-" he was interrupted by a lightning low kick, he caught it on his crossed forearms, the following right cross was dodged along with the elbow return. He took the left on the chin, and the staccato of knee strikes onto his clenched abdominals. He lashed out with a strong left, a feint to allow the right knee to gain him some room. Instead he found the left grabbed at the wrist and a strong follow up snapped his whole face to the right. He went low, trying to force Ranma back and gain the space he needed. Ranma went high, defying gravity, he just seemed to float in place and let the world drop away. His right foot lashed out and it was all Ryoga could do to block it again.

Then Ryoga saw his opponent's eyes. A feeling of deep dread settled into his stomach, not only had Ranma got faster and stronger but that smile had been replaced with a coldness Ryoga had never thought to see on his friend's face.

Kick, block, fist, palm-strike, overhand, sweep. The fight accelerated and accelerated, and Ryoga felt even his legendary ability to soak the damage strainng.

Then it was over, a nerve strike slipped through Ryoga's guard and everything went dark. The very next heartbeat he was lifted off the deck. He knew only too well how close the railing was and how easy that throw would be for Ranma.

But the throw never came instead Ryoga found himself dropped back to the deck. For a moment he just sat there, slumped against the bulkhead. Then he looked up. Ranma was still stood there eyes flaring bright, Aura shining around him, trembling with barely controlled emotion.

"Damn you Ryoga!" she whispered deflating.

"Ranma," Ryoga began, apology on his lips.

"It ain't your fault" she said, clenching and unclenching her fists.

Meanwhile on the poop deck the commotion had drawn a crowd. Almost everybody was there, most of them agape at the sheer fury they had just witnessed.

"What the hell was that about?" Ukyo asked.

"How would you feel if one of your oldest friends had just taken your wife's virginity/" Nabiki replied in a hushed tone.  
"Virginit..." Ukyo muttered turning back, "Then he and...whoa!"

"Tell me about it," Nabiki replied, "and Ryoga's still breathing!" Both watched the young man they barely knew walk slowly away from his friend. Ukyo stepped forward to talk.

"Wake me when we get there." Ranma said in a level tone. " I am going to sleep and then I ain't getting up till we hit port."

"Ranma," Ukyo interrupted his walk, "Do you need some company?" the offer was blatant and a small petty part of Ranma wanted to accept. To hurt Akane like she hurt him, but it wasn't and it wouldn't. More than that he wasn't about to be that person.

"Thanks but no," he said quietly and not unkindly and then he went below.

O

o

o

The following day saw a chunk of the small group walking the deck. Nabiki gently toed the burn mark in the planking.

"That's gonna cost us extra" she said.

"You reckon he's brave enough to ask?" Ukyo replied. Nabiki smirked. "So Gos do you know anything about this place we're headed to?"

"Not a lot" he admitted, "I'm afraid Doctor Deighton and I concentrated only on the more 'esoteric' aspects.

"I gleaned bit from the crew while they were gambling below decks" Nabiki owned, "What?" she asked, "old habits die hard," she explained, leaving out the reasons for why she had hidden in old habits. "Look you want to hear or not?"

"Spill it sugar" Ukyo requested.

"The place is called Pathandaway nd its the biggest thing on the Cirric sea, possibly in the whole region. It's big enough to be a city by western standards and subsists mainly on trade. The biggest thing there is the Arena. Its as bad as it sounds, blood spots and worse, a method of population control."

"Bread and circuses" Gos observed, getting an inquisitive look from the others. "Ancient Rome," he explained.

"oh," Ukyo replied as if that explained it all, which it didn't.

"But the second biggest thing is the Library," Nabiki continued, "it sounds a big deal. And if we are to find this goddamn Gate that seems to be our best chance."

"When do we get there?" Ukyo asked.

"Not for another day or two" Nabiki answered, "Until then we still have some things to work out."

"Like what?" Gos asked.

"Like whether we should be looking at all," Nabiki said.

"Huh?" Asked Ukyo, chewing on a bit of jerky she had scrounged up.

"What's the chance whoever owns this gate is just going to let us use it?" Nabiki asked, taking a piece of jerky from the chef.

"Not even one in a million," Gos grumbled, waving off Ukyo's offer.

"An' if you hadn't noticed" Nabiki said around the dried beef strip, "we ain't in Nerima anymore. Here the good-guys don't always win."

"Or even live" Ukyo said mournfully. Gos and Nabiki nodded in solemn agreement.

"Which brings us to the next problem" Nabiki said.

"Ranma" Ukyo guessed, Nabiki nodded her reply.

"What's the problem?" Gos asked.

"He's going off the deep end" Ukyo replied, earning her a glare from Nabiki.

"It's not that bad," the mercenary girl argued "yet" she admitted.

"I've never seen him so bad" Gos admitted.

"A lot of bad stuff has been stacking up" Nabiki replied.

"What's the score with that anyway?" Ukyo asked.

"After the... wedding" Nabiki began, "he tried to sort the situation. You know do the honourable thing. Well he challenged the Amazon elders for Shampoo's right to choose."

"He lost?" Ukyo asked, disbelievingly.

"Ha" Nabiki laughed, "when have you ever known him to lose a challenge." Ukyo nodded. "He trained for a month, perfecting some new moves and then he kicked some elder butt.

"The problem was that it didn't end there. Shampoo just wasn't willing to call it quits. She challenged him for his right to marry."

"But surely," Gos asked "I mean he beat her way back, she couldn't really have hoped to win."

"Normally no but she slanted the odds," Nabiki said ominously. "She took the lot, super soba, red powder of power, unicorn horn, the works. By the time she arrived at the fight she was bulging like some Dragonball character and foaming at the mouth.

"It wasn't pretty and the fight was worse. It was the man against the monster, only this monster knew martial arts. Ranma really didn't want to hurt her but it wasn't like she was giving him much choice. Whatever her original plan had been now all she wanted to do was destroy, and she was doing a damn good job of it. In fact Ranma spent large chunks of the fight trying to save spectators. Half an hour into the fight Ranma was bleeding, wheezing and blinded by his own blood. Shampoo meanwhile was still warming up.

"Then he dug down deep and pulled out a secret weapon. I swear if he had been a little less concussed he would never have done it, he would have found another way but he wasn't so he didn't.

There on that beautiful summer's day, in front of all of Nerima he called out the name of his new move. An ultimate development of the Umisken Ranma had managed to tap into something primal and with 'Oblivion's edge' he cut the girl who loved him most into two neat halves. The rain came down from nowhere.

"Had she been less hyped, less sure of her own invincibility, perhaps she could have dodged. Had he really known the depth of the forces he was channelling then perhaps things could have gone differently but they didn't. He tapped the primal void, gave up a little piece of himself as he did and cut a hole through reality itself.

"I wish that was all there was to it but I'm sorry to some extent it only went downhill from there." Nabiki finished. For a moment silence reigned.

"Whoa" Ukyo offerd.

"Holy..." Gos whispered only too aware of the reputed cost of tapping the absolute nothingness of the void.

"So what do we do?" Ukyo asked.  
"Watch him," Nabiki suggested, "and try to guide him back to us." The other two nodded and a pact was sealed.

"Now Gos" Nabiki continued, changing the subject "you were explaining how a charm works..."


	6. Pathandaway

**Chapter 6: Pathandaway.**

"Nabiki you have to see this" Akane said, calling her sister up to the bows. Ahead of Ganess's pride was the bay of Peace and beyond that the City of Pathandaway. Framed by snow-topped mountains the city was a study in contrasts from the squalor of the drover's yards to the palaces of the potentates overlooking the bluff. The bay itself glistened in the sunlight, a clear azure blue broken only by the white spray of wavetops. Wher it met the city was built a busy seaport, bustling with activity crowned by gulls. Rising up from the bay was a spray of densely packed housing, each one giving off a gentle plume of white smoke from their chimney. Higher up, on the hill could be seen the array of interlinked white towers, glowing with their own luminescence, that proclaimed itself the Guild of Mages. Closer to the bay but on a bluff all of its own stood the grand Arena, a massive edifice of stone and brick, arched entrances reaching up to vast awnings. Nestled next to it was the large brick building that housed the various logistics to make such a spectacle run, from animal pits to condemned cells.

"There's a ship coming towards us" Ukyo noted, pointing out at a red-painted mastless boat raging through the wavetops towards them.

"Ship ahoy" Called the masthead, somewhat lack-lusterdly.

"Don't worry about that one" Ganess said, wandering up to the trio of girls, "that's just the pilot coming."

"Pilot?" Ukyo asked, "I thought you said you could turn this thing in a public fountain?"

"Aye" Ganess replied, "But clairvoyant I ain't. See that dark patch there, an there?" he said pointing into the bay, and co-incidentally wrapping his other arm around the girl."

"Uh-huh" Ukyo agreed.

"Thy're called sparlings. Nasty pointy metal thinks sunk into the harbour, designed to rip the belly out o' any fool stupid enough to try the harbour without a guide."

"Nasty" Ukyo agreed.

"Meant to deter pirates," Ganess explained, "but really they's just there to make the guilds an extra coin or six, not that they need it," he finished bitterly.

"How's that?" Nabiki asked.

"Fisrt time in Pathandaway is is?" Ganess asked, "Then you'll see soon enough. Meantime get your friends on deck and your purses ready." With that he strode off to do his final adjustments and prepare to heave to for the pilot.

Soon everyone, including a sleepy looking male Ranma, was assembled on deck with their gear watching the ship approach.

"How's it moving" asked Akane, "Shouldn't it have oars or something?"

"Look there," offered the mate, pointing at the waterline below the ship's prow, "Selkies"

"What's a selkie?" Akane asked, trying to make out the dark shapes that appeared to be towing the vessel.

"They're sort of half men." The man explained, "They change into these sea-lion things. Normally they's travel around the deep oceans, only landing to screw and raise kids."

"So why do they..."

"Pull the pilot?" the man guessed, "not like they got much choice is it?" he finished walking off.

"Why don't they just transform and swim away?" Akane wondered.

"First there's that guy with the crossbow watching them" Nabiki answered pointing at a man harnessed into the chainsman's post. And secondly my guess is that most of them have family."

"So they keep their families hostage" Akane stated, an edge in her voice.

"And they probably make sure to give a 'demonstration' every so often too." Nabiki guessed.

"Demonstartion?" Akane queried.  
"Something drawn out and painful..." Nabiki replied.

"I don't think I'm going to like these people very much, "Ukyo observed.

-

As the ship pulled alongside The Nerimans could make ou the chains that held the Selkies and the whip carried by the bowman.

"I've half a mind," Ukyo groused.

"Whoa" Nabiki stilled her, "we aren't here to save the world. Just leave it. Besides what are you going to do? Dive in, sword ion ahnd and-"

"Do my porcupine impression," Ukyo finished ruefully looking at the dozen bowmen at the ready on the deck of the vessel. "This sucks!" she groused.

Evene as the boat was still coming alongside an extremely slender man in a silvery tunic bounded across the gap, landing with all the grace of a hunting cat. Ganess immediately strode up to him and the two shook hads before moving Aft.

"Customs inspection?" Nabiki guessed.

"Seems like it" Ukyo agreed, "shouldn't take long"  
"How so?" Nabiki asked, trying to verify her own theory.

"The two of them knew each other by name," Ukyo replied, "any bribes will already be agreed on" she finished cynically.

"Which leaves us as the only sticking point." Nabiki concluded. "Guys get it together and keep it cool" she said, trying hard not to look at certain people.

"Thank you Avair" the silver clad man said, shaking Captain Ganess by the wrist before moving over to the Nerimans. "Well met, I am Airvhan ip Melhrood," the man pronounced, flicking back his long blond hair, and revealing his ever so pointy ears, "the delegate of the Guilds' council of fair Pathadaway" The words came out quickly, a rehearsed and rehashed speech that he had evidently used on an almost daily basis. "I will need your names, professions and the purposes of your visits" the man continued in an almost bored voice. "In this way we assess all visitors for entry tariff into our fair city. You may of course decline to state your particulars in which case you shall be assessed in the maximum tariff band." He strode to the rail and turned on the small group.

"You needn't bother" the man said to Ukyo, observing the fresh scar on her face and the ease in which she carried her oversized blade, "you're a mercenary, right?"

"You got a problem with that?" Ukyo demanded, sliding a foot into a ready stance. The movement did not go unnoticed and suddenly the small group found themselves the focus of two dozen aiming bowmen.

"Stand down, " Nabiki insisted, far less worried about Ukyo than Ranma. Ukyo nodded and relaxed, stepping back just a little.

"Professionally or personally?" the delegate asked, smirking just a little as he leaned back against the ship's rail. "not that it makes the slightest bit of difference, the council has a policy of letting your type in without charge providing you agree to participate in the games." He took the time to buff his nails against his silvery tabard. "And your kind seem ever willing to hazard your lives for a purse of coins." The man raised a well trimmed eyebrow, "Every one of you sure that you are the first true master of an art. You for instance are no doubt a true master of the sword," he sneered.

Ukyo moved, faster than even Nabiki could follow, a perfect draw, and a leap. Within a heartbeat she had cut a thin sliver of rail from between delegate's second and ring finger.

Before the bowmen could react Ukyo had returned to her stance and shed her sword, leaning it against the mast at her side.

"So I claim," she said, ignoring the inrush of air through Nabiki's teeth. "But my friends are better, Any one of them would have had your fingers, not missed like me! Care for proof?"

"Er no," the delegate replied, rubbing his fingers as if to check they were indeed still attached. He threw a baleful glare at the bowmen, "I don't think that will be necessary friend..."

"Kuonji Ukyo" the chef offered, "And these are my friends, Hibiki Ryoga, Saotome Ranma and Tendo Akane. Swordsmen on and all."

The delegate looked over at the three mentioned and decided not to make an issue of the girl doing the fish impression. "And these other two?"

"I am Tendo Nabiki and this is my Master Gosunkugi Hikaru,"

"He is a mage?" the delegate guessed, well used to seeing products of the perils of magical research.

"You want a demonstration?" Gos replied letting a hint of threat slide through.

"I think not" the man replied, suddenly in a hurry to leave. Perhaps because he found it somewhat unnerving to be so close to nu-jobs who were willing to become human pincushions simply to prove their point. "That will be four lions and six shillings" he informed them, long-fingered hand outstretched.

"Pay the man Kuonji-san" Nabiki said, letting her displeasure show.

"You sure?" Ukyo relied, still on edge

"Yes Ukyo, I'm sure!" Nabiki insisted. Ukyo finally got the hint and did as she was told. That seemed to end the day's business and the delegate rapidly retreated to the vessel he arrived on.

"and Ukyo remind me sometmie to talk to you about how much I like surprises!"

"Hai" replied Ukyo with a smile.

O

o

o

"Okay guys this will do" Nabiki said. They had arrived in a quiet plaza in between some houses the centre of which was dominated by an ornate fountain depicting dolphins swimming reaching and diving. The water and the mammals were depicted in glorious detail, captured in a perfect moment by the skill of the sculptor.

"Whoa that's cool," Akane said, admiring the blue stone fountain.

"Wet," observed Ranma.

"Very" groused Ryoga. Long experience had soured them against things just like that fountain.

"If we can get back to business" Nabiki insisted, not mentioning how much she was enjoying the cool spray from the fountain on her face, "time for rubbernecking later."

"What's the hurry?" Ryoga asked.

"Hell forget sightseeing I need a beer!" Ukyo said without thinking.

"I want to look around" Akane said.

"WE should all be going to the library, if I can get access to a few higher matrices then-"

"Guys!" Ranma interrupted, "Can it! Nabiki is trying to get our asses sorted. Listen or sleep in the street tonight!"

"Thanks Ranma" Nabiki said, hiding her confusion at his changed attitude. "The way I see it we've got a lot to accomplish and the faster we get it done the better off we'll all be."

"Which is why you need to get me to the library. I'll"

"Gos" interrupted Ukyo.

"Not least of which" Nabiki continued as if uninterrupted, "is getting Gos to the library to look up some 'matrices'-"

"What the hell is a mtrices?" Akane asked grumpily.

"A matrix is an exercise fro expanding your consciousness so that it can contain some of the higher power enchant-"

"Guys!" Ranma insisted.  
"We also need to find more out about these games we are committed to playing in and arrange some lodgings. Now I suggest we split up so as to accomplish more."

"We also need to find out more about this World Gate," Ranma reminded them.

"And get a better handle on money matters," Ukyo offered, "everything here seems to cost a lot more."

"Agreed" Nabiki said, glad that the group was getting on board. "Now groups. I suggest Ryoga goes with Gos, that way he's always got a guide and can't get separated." Nabiki deliberately didn't use the word lost. "Akane and Ukyo could try and find us lodgings and I'll take Ranma to see what we can dig up."

"Whoa I don't need a chaperone," said Ukyo.

"Yeah I want to go see the sights," Akane objected, hanging onto Ryoga's arm to say what she didn't voice.

"Actually they are fairly likely not to let Ryoga into the magical part of the library," Gos said

"Why not?" Akane asked, and Ryoga nodded along

"Assuming there is a section on magical matrices, and, I am counting on them having such, they won't let an illiterate even close to their tomes."

"Illiterate?" Ryoga demanded, "Just because I haven't been to school in a whil-"

"Have you been able to read anything since you arrived?" Gos demanded furiously. "We may have got lucky with the language but do you honestly think this place uses anything approaching our hybrid script?"

"It might" Akane said in defence of her friend.

"Bull" groused Gos.

"Whoa" Nabiki interrupted, "we are way ahead of ourselves here. I suggest we save the arguments for things we can fix." The only answer she got was glares. "For now lets just add finding out about writing to the library party," she said through gritted teeth.

"And -" Akane began.

"And Akane can join you," Nabiki conceeded with less than good grace.


	7. The cost of Knowledge

**Chapter 7: The Cost of knowledge.**

The great Library of Pathandaway stood before the three Nerimans, dwarfing them in its immensity. A flight of white marble steps rose up to a colonnaded walkway topped by a great triangular frieze. All the way up the steps and around the plaza below stood small groups of students, robed youngsters discussing, debating or just plain disagreeing about pieces of knowledge they had found within the grand edifice.

"Knowledge is Power," Gos breathed.

"huh?" asked Ryoga.

"The motto above the door" Gos explained, "it reads 'Knowledge is Power' and I guess it has never been truer than it is here."

"How do you figure?" Akane asked.

"Magic isn't exclusive, with enough training, with the right mindset anyone can do it. And through magic man can defy every law of existence. Forget the Garden of Eden's tree of knowledge, forget greek apples, forget books of divinity; here and now a man with the drive can become a god!"

"Whoa" Akane muttered more than a little unnerved by the light shining from Gos's face, "Don't get carried away."

"You don't understand!" Gos said, only narrowly not shouting. "You couldn't understand," he added much more quietly, "all my life I have been small, ignored, the last to be picked, the one everybody forgets. Even before the accident that was so and now all anyone remembers is my scars and my chair. Well not here! Here I have the power. Here I am the one everyone needs. You'll see! This time oit won't be Ranma it'll be me!"

"Gos" Akane interrupted. "people are looking!"

"Exactly!" he shouted, "and as the saying goes, 'you ain't seen nothing yet'! Lead on Ryoga, my destiny calls!"

But it seemed destiny had other plans. No soonber had the trio entered than they were headed off by a librarian. The man was thin to the point of emaciation, his only outstanding feature being a thin wispy beard that gave his angular face a more weasly aspect.

"May I help you?" he asked pointedly.

"We are here to use the library!" Gos pronounced.

"I am glad to hear it Sir. My name is Camulus and I am pleased to make your aquaintance." the librarian replied, "Your kind are always welcome here."

"Thank you, I am Master Gosunkugi " Gos said with a trace of pomposity, and was about to get Ryoga to continue when he was interrupted.

"However these 'people' are another issue" he said, looking at the other tow like they were an unfortunate canine by-product. "We don't get many of their type in here," he explained, leaving out the part about not wanting 'their type' in there.

"This one is my bearer, and the other my bodyguard," Gos lied, and Akane bristled in the background.

"Nevertheless Magister" the librarian argued, "should they attempt to enter the mages' rooms they will surely die."

"Ah" said Gos.

"Are you saying that we're not as smart as your mages!" demanded Akane.

"Frankly yes" the man replied, "I am saying exactly that sellsword!" Akane bristled, hand reaching for the Katana at her side. The librarian, rather than being scared, merely whistled and suddenly on the balcony above them a dozen crossbowmen appeared, each one with their weapons levelled at her and her friends.

"That will be two lions" the man stated, "but please argue some more…" Akane grumbled and looked like she was considering the odds so Gos prodded Ryoga forward and he paid. "Thank you magister," the man offered, refusing to acknowledge the lost boy. "Now if you care to I shall summon one of the library slaves and they may carry you though the enlightened door."

"Hey! How come they can go through the door and-" Akane demanded.

"Because, sellsword" he spoke the word as a curse, "they used to be mages before they made their transgression and were…fixed." A little shudder ran down Akane's back at the relish the man put into the final word, and she was immediately sure she didn't care to know the details.

"That will do nicely" Gos replied, "but nevertheless my servants will require access to the mundane library. They have research I require them to do."

"Hey less with the servant stuff!" Akane objected, causing the Librarian to raise an eyebrow.

"Of course magister" he replied, "the fee will be two lions apiece for starters."

"For starters?" Gos asked.

"That gets them into the library, they will undoubtedly need assistance within…"

"Ah" Gos replied catching onto the drift. "Very well, Ryoga you had better pay him."

"Fine" groused the lost boy, reaching once more for his pouch.

After Gos had left the librarian kept the two of them waiting for what seemed like an hour before returning. "Now what can I do for you?" he asked, the glint of money sharp in his eyes.

"We need a map" Ryoga replied, "to the Gate between Worlds."

"Do you even read?" the man sneered.

"Of course we do!" Akane insisted.

"Fine" the man replied, not disguising his disbelief. "In that case it will be merely ten lions for a guide."

"Ten!" Ryoga exclaimed, "you've already got four!"

"And it costs ten to hire a guide," the man replied, "unless you would rather wander aimlessly around the library until you are thrown out each night?"

"Fine!" Ryoga groused, handing over more of his diminishing coinage.

"And an extra two for the information" the man added.

"What information!" Akane demanded. In response the man looked at Ryoga, as if to check to see he wanted the information.

"Fine," Ryoga said through gritted teeth, "here!" he said, slapping the coins into the man's hand.

"Will that be all?" the man asked, and Ryoga had to step in and silence Akane before she made another scene. "In that case I wish you an enjoyable stay in the great library." The man finished with only a hint of irony.

A little while later a man came over and introduced himself as their guide. He was slightly smaller and a touch more weasly than the previous man but otherwise bore a striking resemblance.

"If you will come with me" the man lisped, "perhapsth we can find what it isth you are looking for." The man motioned and soon they were being led deeper into the maze of rooms that was the great library.

After a little over an hour of fruitless searching both the Nerimans' tempers were starting to fray. "So the maps are scattered through the whole building!" Akane asked, the man smiled and held out a hand.

"Damn you!" she whispered withdrawing the question. It was only then that she noticed that Ryoga hadn't stopped at the same time as them and was no completely gone. "Oh crap!" she whispered, "Ryoga!"

"Where the hell am I now?" Ryoga shouted. He had of course rapidly realised that he had lost his guide and the woman he….'cared' for and had turned around to try and find them. However even after taking that shortcut he had missed them and they had obviously moved on. Nevertheless he could guess what direction they had gone in so he had followed their probable path. The result, rather predictably for anyone who knew him, was that he was thoroughly lost, hence his current predicament. He smiled and, just for old times sake, shouted "Ranma this is all your fault!"

"Sir, please keep the noise down," a portly man in librarian's robes requested, "and, if I may ask, who is this Ranma?"

"Depends how much its going to cost me," Ryoga replied, none too friendlily. The man looked genuinely puzzled for a moment.

"Oh of course," he replied, "it is cumulus on welcome today." Ryoga nodded. "He is a 'special' case, never specialised you see, tried to go for indexing, a way to the top job. Now me I chose a room, and I learnt it. Here" he said with an expansive wave, "is truly my room. I know each and every book and scroll. I have read them all from cover to cover. And in that knowledge I have found fulfilment." He added with passion in his voice. " Which makes him cold and miserable and me the master of all I survey." He finished with a smile, "Now what is it exactly you are looking for?"

"A map" Ryoga replied, "To the World Gate."

"Ahh" he replied "A brave ambition, but I am afraid that I cannot help you."

"Oh" said Ryoga deflating.

"I can however show you a map of the Great Waste, and indeed the environs and town of Bremmon, where the last man we know of gave up his search." Ryoga's eyes lit up and he nodded enthusiastically. The man led him over to a particular part of a particular shelf. He then almost lovingly removed a leather bound roll from the shelf and carried it over to a reading stand. Clipping it gently into place he unrolled a hand drawn map and then turned to Ryoga.

"Now this here is the Waste," he said, "I take it you have heard of it?"

"Er no?" Ryoga hazarded. The man seemed genuinely intrigued.

"Where exactly is it that you come from that you haven't heard of the Great Battle that destroyed the land?"

"Great battle?" Ryoga queried.

"Interesting" the librarian replied, blatantly curious, "two great sorcerers fought a battle for our world, and the battle shattered the land whence they stood, creating the shattered isles and the Great waste. The tremors have been reported to have been felt on the farthest side of the world."

"Ah" Ryoga replied intelligently.

"Anyway" the man continued when it became obvious that his guest wasn't about to elaborate, "on the edge of the Waste is the ruins of the town of Bremmon, and here by is the mountain upon which the last explorer, a man by the name of Bastinatus gave up." Ryoga nodded along.

"Now we are here in Pathandaway" he explained, "and I could show you the floorplans of most of the significant buildings in the area. If we move out here," he said tracing his hand across the map, "into the waste. Well I can show you plans of the largest settlements that exist there-"

"What's this" Ryoga asked pointing at a demarked patch in the waste, "doesn't that mena trees?" he asked.

"Yes, very good!" the Librarian enthused, "That is the Home of the Tabernacle of the healing hand. When the great Battle created the waste of Elrond, as it is correctly known, the Matriarch of the order held back the magic forces unleashed and protected her lands and her peole. And it has remained thus until this day."

"But I thought that this battle happened hundreds of years ago?" Ryoga asked.

"It did," the portly librarian answered.

"Then how is she…"

"What sort of place is it you come from where the gods do not look after their children so." The librarian queried, "it is truly an odd place where a servant of the gods need fear the onset of time." For a moment Ryoga remembered the chaplain at his elementary school, an aging man who had died in mid-sermon, and he did wonder how it was exactly that father Tiso's God could not protect him from so trivial a thing.

"Er" Ryoga began, looking for something to change the subject, "and you say this is Bremmon?" he said pointing at far off Metryll.

"No my friend" the librarian corrected, but only after a long pause taken to consider his strange guest, "that is Metryll, it was built to serve the less 'aesthetic' needs of the sisters of the healing hand."

"Oh" Ryoga replied.

"This shape here is the mountain," the librarian continued, "and here I can show you no maps at all." The librarian finished with an ominous tone.

"Because nobody who has gone onto the mountain has returned?" Ryoga guessed.

"What do you think I have been getting at?" the librarian replied.

o

o

o

The portly librarian, Oreen, had an apprentice show Ryoga to the door and he emerged into the sunlight, clutching in his hand a copy of the map as drawn by Oreen himself.

"Ryoga!" Akane shouted, throwing herself into his arms. "I was so worried. I searched and searched and then he wanted more money and I got into an argument and they threw me out and I was going to fight them all but they said that would cost a lot more money and I thought that Nabiki would be angry so I"

"Whoa" Ryoga wheezed, causing Akane to loosen her grip a little. "Any sign of Gos?" he asked, anything to take his mind off just how good her body had felt pressed up against him.  
"Not Yet" Akane said, a little confused by Ryoga's coldness.

"I guess we could wait" Ryoga said. Akane smiled happily and the two of them sat down on the steps, soon losing the world in each other's nearness.


	8. The greatest gift

**Chapter 8: The greatest gift?**

"So now that they've gone" Ukyo began, "How's about that drink?" As she suggested this she wrapped her arms around the shoulders of her companions.

"No" replied Ranma, shrugging off the arm. In his mind he could still recall the last time Ukyo had gone for a drink when she was supposed to be doing something else. Nabiki began by nodding her agreement then stopped.

"Wait" Nabiki said, "Maybe you have an idea."

"Course I do sugar," Ukyo agreed. "If you want to know how much something costs you may as well start with a pint."

"Guys" Ranma argued, "I really don't think this is a good idea."

"Sure it is Ranchan" Ukyo disagreed. "We need to find out about the Games and get an idea of how much things cost. Honestly can you think of a better place?"

"Sure I can" Ranma disagreed.

"Well?" Nabiki asked Ranma just grumbled under his breath, already knowing that he had lost the argument. "Then lets see what the local brew tastes like."

"This is not a good idea" Ranma re-iterated, but followed on behind the girls.

O

O

An hour later found the three of them sitting with 'Tomolo', the middle-aged but well built proprietor of the Singing Sparrow, savouring their second round of his heavily spiced beer. Tomolo was it turned out, nearly as foreign as them, having arrived from the near east years ago, illiterate and unable to understand more than a smattering of the local language. Since then he had obviously prospered, up until the point where he had been able to buy the sparrow and begin to refit it in a manner more to his taste.

Which is why the four of them were sat on cushions around a low table whose only accompaniment was a large urn topped off with smoking pipes. It might also be the reason why the serving maids were wearing little more than Arabic-esque semi-transparent harem-girl costumes, or alternatively there might have been another reason.

"So do you think one of those would suit me?" Ukyo said, somewhat drunkenly, nodding towards one of the girls.

"Of course it would child" Tomolo agreed, "and should you be looking for some work while you are in town the benefits are…"

"Strange" Nabiki observed.

"What?" slurred Ranma, proving once again that he had nowhere near his father's tolerance for alcohol.

"Normally it would be you ending up in the harem-slut outfit," she replied smiling and leaning close so as not to be overheard. Ranma responded with a glare and a mutter, which only made Tendo-san smile all the harder.

"Don't you think we had better be getting back to…" Ranma suggested after taking another look into his tankard and deciding he couldn't take another swig.

"Nah" Ukyo disagreed, "we got plenty of time, and things here are just starting to get interesting," she finished looking Tomolo in the eyes.

"No-" Nabiki began.

"Whoa!" Ukyo insisted, temper fraying, "Far too many people have been saying that to me far too often today! You ain't my dad, I do what I want!"

"Fine" responded Nabiki, her own temper twitching. This time it was Ranma's turn to calm her with a touch.

"We don't need her" Ranma explained, "we're just sounding things out and she's safe here" Nabiki nodded and stood. The two left with only a slight sway.

"Now get me another drink and lets talk about those 'benefits'" Ukyo was saying as the door shut.

O

O

O

"So you want a hundred for this glamoured blade but only thirty for this one?" Nabiki asked. She was standing in the Arena market talking to a dwarven vendor, he was a little under five foot tall, stocky and heavily bearded, but other than that he was little different from any other denizen Nabiki had met. The man was the very first dwarf she had seen and half the reason she was talking to him was because of that rather than the quality of his wares. Nevertheless the stout man was impressing her, he seemed to really know his wares and was offering her a substantial discount.

"Well yer see lass" he explained, "the light it glows matches yer eyes an I just could'nae forgive myself if I did nae give yer a chance to buy it."

"And" Ranma interrupted, newly returned from a food vendor's stall. "This one is seriously flawed just above the hilt guard."

"What!" demanded the dwarf, "You dare tae accuse me o' sellin' flawed blades?"

"Yes I do!" declared Ranma, hackles bristling.

"Can you nae see what I am?" the man demanded. "I am a dwarf!" he declared, "An there has never been a dwarf in this life who has sold a shoddy sword!"

"Ranma?" Nabiki asked, suddenly unsure.

"See this mark here" he said, turning the blade and indicating with his finger so she could just make out a tiny blemish on the cutting edge, "and how it runs to here" he continued, "that is a flaw."

"Er" the dwarf started, suddenly deflated and looking around nervously.

"And a bad one" Ranma added, "otherwise you wouldn't know until the weapon failed on you as you used it."

"Er, my mistake" the man said, "that one was made by my Human apprentice, I wonder how it got in there?" he mused, not very convincingly.

"Just in case you spotted a dupe" Nabiki suggested. "It seems you have wronged me," she suggested, "now lets talk about how you are going to make it up to me…" The dwarf gulped hard.

O

O

A good hour later Nabiki and Ranma finally left the market and started wandering back, down a steep hill. They had got the information they needed direct from the Arena and were two reasonable blades richer at very little cost to themselves, they were also significantly less drunk than when they had set out.

"So how?" she began

"Travelling with pops" Ranma explained, "we stayed at this forge near Koyama. As normal we ended up owing the owner some money, the big difference is that he had pop's tanto so we had to pay. Pops sold me to him as help. It was actually one of my favourite times on the trip, I got to sleep in the forge and he knew loads of interesting stories. Somewhere along the line I picked up a fair bit about steel and swords."

"There's still so much I don't know about that trip" she mused.

"Trust me," Ranma objected, "there's plenty you don't want to know."

"Look at that!" Nabiki said, pulling on Ranma's arm to stop him. In front of them the city descended into the bay, upon which rode the gently bobbing forms of a half dozen full rigged sailing ships. The sunlight glinted off the gently rippling waves and the gently sloping roves throwing the city into sharp relief. Ranma looked at it and then back at her, her smile was lighting up her entire face.

"Yes it is" she agreed.

"Huh?" he asked.

"Oh sorry" Nabiki mocked, "the big tough martial artist doesn't want to admit…" Then she caught on and for the first time in a long time blushed like a schoolgirl. There was an awkward silence then Nabiki smiled and grabbed Ranma's arm, leading him away down the hill, pretending not to notice that their arms were linked.

The wind shifted as they entered a poorer district and suddenly their noses were assaulted by a terrible smell and a new set of noises.

"The slave market" Nabiki postulated, wrinkling her nose a little and trying to blot out the sounds and smells of human misery.

"Uh-huh" Ranma agreed, a little spaced by the girl's public display.

"We could…" she began, but trailed off when Ranma stiffened.

"You're not serious" he insisted, letting go her arm

"Wait a moment Ranma," she objected, a little wounded, "think about it for a second. It wouldn't be real slavery like they know, we're only going as far as the gate and then we can let them go. It's not as if we would be mistreating them and-"

"Nabiki" he broke in, "No. It is just not right!"

"Maybe back at home but here…"

"Nabiki no" Ranma insisted, "people aren't property to be traded!" Nabiki was going to argue again but saw the look on Ranma's face and decided against it.

"Okay" she agreed and led them on a more circular route.

The wind shifted again and a whole new set of smells assailed them. This time the smells were simpler, what they were smelling was sewage.

"Sheesh!" Nabiki swore, "that stinks!"

"It's coming from over there" Ranma pointed to a pit that was barely visible between two houses. Suddenly there was a flare of light and a roar of noise.

"An incinerator?" Nabiki queried, leading the way down the alley. Ranma took one look at the less than salubrious area around them and caught up, this was not the sort of place any sort of woman should be travelling in alone.

o

"Oh my!" Nabiki breathed. In front of her was a massive pit, easily two hundred foot across and a good thirty feet deep. Into the pit opened dozens of pipes, all of which were dribbling raw human effluent. Most amazing of all however was the method of disposal, chained in the centre of the pit was a truly massive winged lizard, which in turn was breathing flame across the pit to burn the sewage. It was easily twice Ranma's height to the shoulder and coiled around all but filled the pit.

"Dragon" Ranma asserted, instinctively readying himself for a fight.

"**Not that bright is he**" came a voice that seemed to fill Nabiki's head.

"Whoa" she said, somewhat surprised.

"**But then your kind aren't as a rule,"** continued the voice 

"You're the dragon!" she figured aloud. As she did the dragon turned to look at her, its massive Alligator head bringing its burning red eyes to bear directly on her.

"Huh?" asked Ranma.

"**Well done**" it replied, **"Now go away!**" and with the command came a wave of nausea, swamping all of Nabiki's other thoughts. **"After all who would want to look at a sewer!**" it added with bitterness. Another gout of flame burst from its maw, incinerating a fresh flow of effluent.

"You're talking in my head" Nabiki said, between gasps.

"**Very clever Girl. And you are talking with your mouth. And the warrior beside you is standing mute. Have you any other subtle observations to make or perhaps you would like to tell me what colour the sun is?**" the dragon sneered, **"if not then finish your pointless taunting and Leave!**" As it finished the dragon flicked back its neck, stretching the chain, and revealing it to be a bright shiny gold colour where the filth had not reached.

"**That's so I can't burn my way out fool**" the dragon told her **"Even if I was foolish enough to try I would only burn myself**" the scarring around the dragon's neck clearly showed it had been just that foolish, or that desperate. Suddenly a ring of burning flame seemed to catch Nabiki around the neck, searing through skin and scorching flesh.

As quickly as it came it was gone, leaving Nabiki gasping on her knees and Ranma ready to jump into the pit.

"**Do you like it human?**" the dragon sneered **"your kind-**" 

"No!" Nabiki interrupted, "Not my kind, I would never"  
"Nabs" Ranma said turning with concern on his face.

"Not now" she said, waving him down. **"You're not hearing my voice are you**" she thought.

"**Why would I be interested in your voice?**" the dragon asked

"**I don't know,**" Nabiki admitted, feeling lost **"but…how….why**"

"**I'm a dragon yea, but immune to heat no. My flame is my own to command but the heat is another matter. And why do I hate you, I hate you because you…wait, who are you?**"

"I am Tendo Nabiki and this Is Saotome Ranma" Nabiki said aloud, **"And we never did anything to you!**" she insisted.

"**I am Ellegon, disposer of wastes**" the dragon pronounced with bitter pomposity. **"For Three centuries I have laboured here, burning the sewage of the city so they don't 'foul' their harbour.**" Then Ellegon let Nabiki feel a bit of what it was like to be chained in a pit of filth for three hundred years. She fell onto her side, heaving up her lunch.

"That's it!" Ranma declared, heaving her upright to bound away.

"**That's right they caught me when I was still a child, less than half a decade out of the shell and bound me _here!_ Do you think that's right? Do you?**" the Dragon demanded. Another wave of nausea accompanied the question.

"**Please don't**" Nabiki pressed, pushing the confused Ranma away.

"**You don't do you**" replied the dragon to its own query, **"You wouldn't have done this.**"

"**Never**" Nabiki insisted, trying to quosh the rebellious conscience that hinted otherwise. **"This is wrong!**" she said, echoing Ranma's earlier words. She looked again at the pit and another wave of revulsion passed through her, this time all her own. But what could she do, the chain was thick and the dragon looked hungry…

"**I am Hungry**" the dragon exclaimed, **"We don't need to eat but it has been a Very long time**" he let Nabiki feel a hint of the remembered satisfaction of crunching a cow, **"We like to eat,**" it concluded.

"**I didn't know**" Nabiki admitted, **"I don't know anything about dragons**"

"**Are you stupid or just ignorant**" he sneered.

"**Just ignorant I hope**" Nabiki replied, letting the last traces of nausea pass.

"**Very well**" the dragon replied, **"I have a proposition for you 'Ice Queen,' I shall do two things for you if you will do but one for me?**"

"**Explain**" she prompted assessing her options.

"**True I can't reach your mind from much further and I wouldn't be able to talk to you or do thi-**"

"**NO!**" Nabiki commanded **"don't make me be sick again. But you've got to know that I can't get down there.**"

Flame roared **"No need, fool. I wouldn't ask that of you of course**" it sneered, **"not from one of your kind! But if you could see your way to bringing me something to eat, a sheep, a cow, something? In return I will tell you something you need to know of the World Gate you seek.**"

"**How?**" Nabiki asked, defensive.

"**I read minds human**" the dragon roared.

"**Fine**" she concluded, **"A sheep or the like for the info, if it proves worthwhile.**"

"**Agreed!**" the dragon asserted **"Firstly the Gate you seek is below the great mountain at Bremon, just north of the Waste of Elrood.**"

"**Thank you but my friends-**" Nabiki interrupted 

"**-Have probably already found such. I doubt it but there is more. Something they could not have discovered, something I know purely because of what I am.**"

"Nabs" Ranma broke in.

"Shhh, I'm talking" Nabs replied, waving him down.

"To the dragon?" he asked.

"**Yes to the dragon!**" Ellegon replied, his mental voice cutting through both minds. Ranma whirled back into a stance.

"**But your mind is much easier to talk to**" Ellegon finished.

"**You were talking about what you are..**" Nabiki prompted.

"**Yes,**" Ellegon began again **"I am a dragon, and as such I know where my kind are.**"

"**Then there is a dragon at the gate**" Nabiki concluded. That was a problem, still with any luck it would be smaller than this one and it wasn't as if Ranma hadn't –

"**Fool**" Ellegon cried, **"He is much larger. He is old enough that the mountain grew around him. He is the first of us and he sleeps there guarding the gate.**"

"Whoa" Nabiki said. Then she turned to Ranma who was only just calming again. "Ellegon just told me there's the daddy of all dragons guarding the gate."

"Nabs" Ranma interjected, "Would you please tell me what's going on," he implored.

"**Tell him to go away. His mind is too closed**" Ellegon said into her mind.

"Does he know of any weaknesses?" Ranma asked, getting back on track.

"**Fool**"

"I heard that" Ranma replied indignantly.

"**And fool you are. He is the first of us, do you really think you could beat him. You could easier destroy the mountain he is under than dent a single one of his scales!**"

"Uh-huh" Ranma agreed, remembering Herb, Saffron and two mountains.

"**Tendo Nabiki I have told you this will you now bring my sheep or must I show you more**" Ellegon asked.

"**You make that sound like a threat**" she countered, **"and I don not respond well to threats**"

"**Very well then I will make you understand**" Ellegon insisted.

"Understand what" Nabiki replied and then her Universe fell apart.

X X 

He was sixteen, had been on the road most of his life, never had time to settle but that was okay he was going to be the best, a Man among men.  
Jusenko, the pools, a fall, an ending of everything.  
A village, a reawakening, the joy of the art bringing life back to a broken child.

The chase, fight or run, to fight means to kill the girl so run, too busy to think of anything other than escape.

Nerima, the Tendo-ke, why? What's he up to? A friend? Betrayal, hurt, darkness.

Then a challenge, a victory, the elation of excelling, even some recognition for his deeds. But….  
'Freak!' 'crossdresser!' 'pervert!' 'tool'

And so it went on a spiral of small rises followed by crashing falls. Every time he managed something he would be brought down again, reminded of how little his life was worth. Systematically betrayed by everyone he cared for, friends, family, new acquaintances, even his own body.

Nobody cared.

As any teenager he was insecure but with all of this….

_Then it got worse._

Saffron, the big high, a God! Followed by the marriage, his last chance gone, half a man for ever more, honour sold for another meal.

_And worse_

Married, the happiest day, a hammer, an accusation, a challenge from a friend, a night broken and bloodied with only worse to come.

Xian, normally so vibrant, so fallen, his fault, should lay down and let it be over, honour served.

No! Stand! Fight! Never give in!

Too late? Too slow? Not enough?

Find a way! Dig deeper! Remember Saffron, Herb, the others, FIGHT!  
Deep down, the darkness, beyond... OBLIVION'S EDGE!

Xian, broken, bleeding, dying.  
'what have I done?'

Empty.  
Honour? Manly man? Protect the weak? Care for your friends?  
Waste.

Easy answer, honourable answer, only way to make things right.

_As Flowers on the wind_  
_So are we,  
Lost_

_Fallen._

White shirt, sword bright, death's grinning skull.  
Nabiki, bringing him back, blood on her hand.  
One person, one who didn't lie, who was there, needs him still. Beautiful.

For her.

X X

"That's it Nabs" Ranma said pulling her into his arms.

"Wait!" she croaked. Looking into his eyes, swirling with fear and concern and something else? **"Understanding eh?**" she thought, closing her eyes.

"**Now you know**" 

"**Did you, could you see?**"  
**"No, he is far too closed for me to tell, but you…**" the dragon replied. Nabiki slowly opened her eyes to see those cerulean orbs staring right back at her as if by force of will he could see what was wrong. She reached up her hand, curling it around his head.

Slowly she brought him to her lips. The kiss scattered all else, for a moment the universe was them. Hearts beating as one, beings bound together. Perfect seconds.

Then it passed and she was looking into his eyes, seeing only confusion.

"Ranma" she said.

"Uh-huh" he replied seemingly dazed.  
"I need you to do something for me" she asked in a quiet voice. He just nodded in reply. "The dragon should not be chained," she finished. Again he nodded, setting her on her feet. Somehow he just knew how serious she was.

"**Ellegon**" she prompted, **"I always pay my debts,**"

"**Then I get my sheep**"

"**no**"

"**NO?**" demanded the dragon.

Ranma strode to the edge, and dropped.

"**What are you doing?**" the dragon demanded.

"**Not now**" Nabiki replied, **" besides I thought you read minds?**"

"**You're too clouded, too intense, I….**" The dragon replied, watching Ranma stride through the warm filth. **"You're not?**" he wondered, not believing, not daring to believe. **"Please please please, please**" he repeated. **"Don't change your mind please.**"

Ranma reached Ellegon, effortlessly hopping up to him, and onto his foreleg. "Lift your head" he ordered, "If there's a weakpoint it'll be where you can't see, or bite." Ellegon raised his neck, hearts hammering. **"please human don't change your mind**" he blurted, **"I'll fly away, gone, into the skies-**"

"Shh" Ranma insisted, concentrating on the chain, looking for a flaw. Nothing. "Damn"

"**Please no**" Ellegon insisted, **"there must be.**" 

"Shh" Ranma repeated, still searching. Still nothing. He could almost hear the dragon's disappointment. There was only one answer.

"**No**" The dragon said, a tremor in his voice. ,"**that is too much, I can't ask**-"

"Shh" Ranma repeated, placing his hands on the chain and reaching down into himself for the darkness.

There it was, the hate, the fear, the wrath. Now beyond...

"Oblivion!" he whispered and between his hands all things ceased.

Suddenly the world lit up, bright incandescent lights, magic burnt awry, exploding.

And a drawn out 'clash' as a mage-wrought chain fell free.

"**FREE!**" Ellegon cried to the world, **"FREE!**".

He reared up once, full stretch onto his hindlegs, crying defiance to the world, **"FREE!**"

Then he came down. **"You two,**" he called, **"I never…**". Gently he lifted the filthy Ranma up to the edge where Nabiki stood.

"**Stand Back**" he ordered.

"Wait!" cried Nabiki seeing him rear back and gather his breath, "Don't" Suddenly flame enveloped the two of them, driving away the filth and so much more. A cleansing shower of flame. **"My flame could never hurt you**" Ellegon declared with real emotion in his voice, **"never.**"

Then it stopped. The dragon looked at them once more and then leapt for the sky. **"FREE!**"

"Fly free my friend" Nabiki offered to the fast dwindling speck.

"Nabs?" Ranma started, "sometime you really have to tell me what just happened."

"Sure I will Hero" she replied, "but for now I think we had better run. Somehow I don't think the guild guys are gonna be pleased." Ranma looked once back at the pit then back to her. She grabbed his hand and they ran.

"Damn! That feels good!" she swore with a smile on her face that could have lit Hades itself.

And in the background they maybe could just hear a faint call **"Free!**"


	9. Quiet Repose

**Chapter 9: Quiet repose.**

"This is it?" Akane asked, somewhat nonplussed. Together Ranma and Nabiki had led the other three to the Singing Sparrow. They were now stood outside, preparing to go in, much to Akane's disapproval.

However the moment they stepped through the door Akane's complaints stopped. The hanging silks and breezy caftans rendered the whole place an air of mystery and luxury.

"Welcome back my friends," Tomolo declared, his great frame appearing around a hanging gauze, "and these must be your friends. Ukyo-chan has told me much of you." That raised a few eyebrows. "Now come, sit, Food shall be brought, and wines" he waved his hand expansively towards one of the low tables and its accompanying cushions.

"Uh, if it's all the same" Akane interrupted, "what I really want is a bath and a rest."

"That sounds divine" Gos agreed, and Ryoga soon joined in, never one to pass up the luxury of warm water.

"Me" Ranma disagreed, "I'm eating."

"I'm with you" Nabiki agreed. "We had a sort of wash earlier."

"Huh?" Ryoga asked.

"Pervert" Akane mumbled, just loud enough to set Ryoga off. Fortunately Tomolo was not to be put off.

"Of course!" he enthused, "I shall have baths drawn immediately. Those who wish to bathe shall bathe and those who are clean shall eat!" he pronounced as if it was the brightest idea since sunlight. "Abivale" he began, indicating one of the 'harem girls' "shall show you to your suite and I shall send up baths to be filled. Should you require anything else, perfumes, sweetmeats or company you have but to ask." It took a while for Akane and Ryoga to work out what he meant by 'company' and the results were less than ideal.

"I am not a Pervert!" Akane insisted at the suddenly confused Tomolo. Meanwhile Ryoga had gone dumb and slightly brighter red than Ranma's old favourite shirt.

"What they are trying to say," Gos began, trying to smooth things over, "is that where we come from it is considered wrong to take a slave to your bed."

"Ahhh" Tomolo replied, as if he actually believed Gos, "Never fear my diminutive friend, all my staff are free and work for me from choice alone. "Should you wish to take one to your bed you may do so with a clear conscience," he finished with a happy beaming, smile.

"Perverts" Akane re-iterated but quieter but the lure of a bath finally beat her indignation and she let herself be led away.

Once in the privacy of their suite the three of them found it to be laid out much as below, with two rooms splitting off from a central 'lounge' area, separated only by hanging curtains of caftan. Even as they were making themselves at home servants carried up baths and began filling them.

The baths turned out to be of a western design but scorching hot and, once the Nerimites had got in, almost overflowing. As each one of them got into their bath, Gos helped by a very attractive young lady, they let out an almost theatrical sigh of contentment. The attendants were quickly waved away and for the first time in a very long time the three of them were alone in their own little world. One by one they dozed off.

Meanwhile Ranma and Nabiki set about the serious business of stuffing their faces, Ranma because he's a Saotome and Nabiki because she had lost the contents of her stomach.

Eventually they were well and truly fed, even Ranma's bottomless pit of a belly was feeling slightly full. The wine that came afterwards was again heavily spiced, and strong. What little alcohol tolerance Nabiki had was quickly taken up by her lack of stomach lining. The drink conspired with the food and the emotional day to sneak up on the two of them. A mere half jug later the two of them were suffering from severe contentment and soon found themselves relaxing into the cushions.

Ten minutes later Tomolo came to check on his guests only to find the two of them fast asleep on the cushions. Nabiki was curled up child-like into Ranma's arms, her head rested on his shoulder. He in turn had one arm thrown protectively around her and his body half turned as if to shield the sleeping girl from the world itself.

"No Bungaroo" he told the servant with him, "let them sleep, they will be happy enough there till morning," he finished with a paternal smile on his face.

O

O

"That bath was heavenly" Nabiki said. She had just come down to join the others, co-incidentally just as breakfast was being served. She had just had one of the most restful night's sleep in her life and a fantastic soak, she was actually relishing the morning.

"Tell me about it" Gos replied, remembering the skilled hands that had helped him to his bed last night and 'tucked' him in.

"Uh-huh" Ryoga agreed, looking slightly spaced in the morning light.

"You should see Tomolo's" Ukyo offered, "man that thing was huge."

"His bath or his…" Nabiki teased.

"Oh well you know" Ukyo joked.

"Pervert" Akane accused, the only one out of sorts this morning.

"I ain't even told you what we got up to yet sugar" Ukyo replied, refusing to be baited.

"How could you?" she whispered harshly, "What about Konatsu?" she accused. Suddenly everything went still. "Forgotten about him already?" she sniped.

"Akane" Nabiki interrupted trying to play the peacemaker.

"No Nabs" Ukyo interjected, "I got this one." Then turning to Akane she looked the smaller girl direct in the eye, "I loved Konatsu" she began, "More than any of you will ever know. But the simple truth is that it wasn't like that. He and I had something special, and yes sometimes it took us to bed together. Not that that is any of your concern. But as a couple? No, neither of us really had what the other wanted, neither of us was man enough for the other."  
"You mean?" Akane asked, incredulous.

"Is that so hard to work out sugar?" Ukyo replied, "Yes Konatsu was queerer than a Thai lady boy."

"So that makes it alright that he's dead?" demanded Akane, changing tack.

"No it doesn't" Ukyo replied through gritted teeth. "But unlike some others I said my goodbyes on the ship."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Akane demanded.  
"Are you really sure you want me to go there" Ukyo replied, pointedly looking at Ryoga. Akane actually had the good grace to blush a little.

"That's different Ryoga and I are-"

"Don't want to hear it sister" Ukyo interrupted. "Simple truth time. On the ship you were feeling vulnerable and he filled the gap, so to speak."

"Hey-" Akane objected.

"Hey nothing," Ukyo corrected. "I ain't married, or even engaged any more, how I choose to spend my nights is up to me! Last night I was in need and Tomolo helped me. If" she continued, drawing out the word, "you have a problem with that then, tough!"

"Ukyo!" Akane began.

"No Akane" Nabiki cut in, "just let it lie okay."

"Why should-"

"'Neesan!" Nabiki hissed.

"Morning guys" Ranma said, coming around the curtain, and taking a seat. If he noticed the sudden lack of conversation then he made no indication of it. He had woken up not far from where they were sitting, with Nabiki in his arms. After a moment of extreme panic he had calmed down enough to think. So he had carried her upstairs and with the help of a maid, laid her out in the 'lounge.' He had then gone to do his morning Katas. When he had returned he had all but walked in on Nabiki in the bath. Which for him was a major achievement, after all he only 'all but' walked in on her.

Now he was back, and desperately trying not to think about the way he woke up this morning, or what he nearly saw.

"Man that smells good!" he declared, loading up a plateful. He then proceeded to demonstrate that whatever else had changed his appetite was not one of them. For a moment everyone sat watching him eat.

"What?" he asked, "do I have something on my face?" The others smiled and the ice was broken, soon all were digging into their meals.

"So Gos what d'ya find in the library?" Ukyo asked between mouthfuls.

"Well-" he began only to be cut off by Nabiki.

"Whoa" she said, "Guys I think perhaps we should keep at least some of our business to ourselves," she finished, looking directly at Ranma.

"So how are we supposed-" Akane asked.

"_How is Engrish yours?" _asked Ranma in badly accented English and around his latest mouthful.

"_A lot better than yours" _Ukyo replied. "_Guys?"_

"_Mine is Good very"_ replied Akane.

"_Speak srowry"_ Ryoga replied, "_I understand prenty good"_

"_Okay guys" _Nabiki began, "_I'll make this simple. We found out where the gate is and that its guarded."_

"How?" demanded Akane and Ryoga nodded along.

"_We talked to a dragon,"_ Nabiki explained.

"A Dra-Urrk" Akane began loudly before being cut off by Nabiki's hand.

"_A Dragon" _reasserted Nabiki, "_who was an integral part of the city sewage system-"_

"_Integra? _Isn't that a girl from that anime?" Ukyo asked, Ranma just shrugged. "You're gonna have ta use easier words sugar. If I ain't getting it they sure won't."

"Domo, _The dragon was a fire for_ _poo" _Nabiki explained, "_we let him go."_

"_You let the dragon go" _Gos said, "_They're really proud of that dragon!"_

"_You let a dragon go?"_ Ukyo demanded. "_Dragons burn things!"_

"_Ellegon promised not"_ Ranma interrupted.

"_And you believed him?"_ Ukyo demanded incredulous.

"Wha?" Ranma asked, not getting the drift.

"_Yes we did"_ replied Nabiki, "_and he flew off without toasting the town. So it would seem we were right no?"_

"Huh?" Ranma demanded.

"_Now we were talking about the gate!" _Nabiki insisted.

"_Want go home!"_ Ryoga broke in.

"So do we all," Nabiki agreed. "And to do that we have to sort some things out…" she prompted.

"Here's the map" Akane said, unrolling Ryoga's contribution form the library. "We're here" she said, pointing to the city symbol by the bay, "and this is Bremon" she said pointing to the range of mountains beyond the waste. According to the scale that is about…"

"A bloody long way" Gos interrupted.

"It's not so far" Ranma objected.

"Can you see Nabiki walking there?" Gos responded dubiously. Ranma took the point.

"Horses" Ukyo interjected.

"Huh?" Ryoga responded.

"We need horses" she explained, "with horses we can cut the trip in half at least."

"Huh" Ranma grunted, not exactly agreeing.

"How many of us are you going to carry?" Ukyo asked in a less than nice way. "And this waste of Elrood is something like a desert right?" Ryoga and Akane nodded.

"You gonna carry our water for those weeks in the desert?"

"Okay!" Ranma exclaimed, "But there is still a problem. Who can ride?" Ryoga, Ukyo and Akane raised a hand each.

"Huh?" Ranma exclaimed.

"School trip" "Learnt as a kid" "Exploring China" they replied.

"Ah yes" Nabiki mused bitterly, remembering the scams she had been forced to pull to pay for that trip.

"Your funeral" Ranma replied, remembering a conversation with an old man about just how uncomfortable it was breaking in a new saddle.

"Still you are right" Nabiki mused, "but that's the problem, horses ain't cheap and they aren't the only problem. We're going to need at least one wagon, more weapons, probably some armour for the slower ones of us…"

"Damn" Ryoga muttered. Nabiki nodded.

"How short are we?" Ukyo asked.

"A lot" Nabiki replied, mournfully.

"So how..."

"The Games" Ranma supplied.

"My thoughts exactly" Nabiki replied. "Coming up tomorrow is one of the weekly draws but three days later they are holding a big one for a city holiday-"

"Founding day" Gos supplied.

"Founding day" Nabiki agreed, "I say we enter you all into the competition and see how much we can win."

"And you'll be running a book?" Akane asked, used to her sister's ways.

"Uh-huh" Nabiki agreed. "We'll win a stake in the small one and lay it out for the big one."

"But what about the whole _Dragon _thing?" Gos objected.

"We _Lie low_" Nabiki replied, "When we aren't working we keep to ourselves."

"Working" Akane replied saying the word with distaste. She was suddenly seeing gloom in her future, she just knew Nabiki was going to be awkward about this.

"Sorry princess," Ukyo replied "you may even have to get your pretty little hands dirty" she mocked.

"Why you…" Akane said, rising to her feet and colouring.

"Not now!" Nabiki "Children!" she muttered. "For now we go haggle. The moment we get the dough we blow, okay!" When nobody immediately agreed she insisted, "Okay!"

"Okay!" they chorused.

"Now we need some details…."


	10. Fun? and Games

**Chapter 10: Fun and Games.**

"Seems very do-able" Ranma agreed. He as sat in the middle of the others, less Gos who was once more at the library, in the stands of the arena. They had just watched the last round of the sword competition and like the others he was left feeling more than a little confidant.

"I'm not so sure" Nabiki interjected. She was sat next to him, notebook in hand.

"Why not" asked Ukyo, who was also apparently thinking hard.

"Look around," Nabiki said nodding at certain groups in the stands, "We aren't the only serious types who chose not to compete this time. I can see at least five hard-asses who have spent the entire time watching and studying form."

"Uh-huh" Ukyo agreed. "but I was more thinking about the risks.  
"Risks?" Ranma asked.

"This was just a local do, right?" she prompted. Ranma and Nabiki nodded. "But we saw what three competitors taken out through injuries."

"Uh-huh" Nabiki said, following the thread, "and you suspect that will be even worse when the big guns come out." Ukyo took her turn to nod.

"Don't work like that" Ranma broke in.

"Explain" Nabiki demanded, this form of conversation was one they had long practiced.

"Big guns mean less injuries not more" Ranma supplied.  
"Less accidents" Nabiki agreed.

"But" Ukyo broke in, "You're assuming all are accidents."

"No honour for purses?" Nabiki queried.

"It's a lot of money," Ukyo explained.

"Guys?" Aknae broke in. She was sitting next to Ryoga and holding his hand, who in turn was wearing his now usual stupid grin. No doubt Akane had found some time to 'cheer him up.' "What the hell are you going on about?" The other three looked at her and stared for a moment then tuned away again.

"Significant?" Nabiki asked to Ranma, ignoring her sister's pout.

"No pain no gain, and no real choice" he conceded.

"I agree," replied Ukyo, "healing draughts?" Nabiki nodded and made a note.

"Plan," Nabiki finalised

"Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on!" demanded Akane.

"Okay sis" Nabiki offered. "We have just decided that even though the danger levels of unguarded blades are likely to be so much higher when professionals are cheating that the reward outweighs the risk. So we are entering into every contest we can."

"Axe" called Ukyo.

"Unarmed and sword" Ranma added, the last one somewhat reluctantly.

"hey what about me?" Akane demanded, "and Ryo-chan."

"More than one of us can enter a single event" Nabiki explained in a tired tone.

"Oh?" Akane replied, "in that case…what events are there again." This caused a none-too-subtle sigh from her companions. Ryoga on hearing this immediately bristled. Ranma spotted and drew on his customary fighting smirk.

"Whoa boys," Nabiki cut in "no free shows for the opposition."

"Ah just let him bust fang-boy up the once" Ukyo complained.

"Ukyo!" Nabiki chided, before taking a breath. "guys, its been a hot day and a long one, who says we finish this over a few drinks."

"Best idea you've had since the bath" Ukyo agreed enthusiastically.

"Less chance of being overheard" Ranma agreed, having spotted a weasely man moving closer to them.

Together they stood and left the arena and headed into town proper. Nabiki was reworking the figures as they went, Akane and Ryoga lost in their own little world. Ranma drew up alongside Ukyo.

"Seen him?" he asked.

"Guy from the stands?" she asked. He nodded, "About twenty paces back?"

"Twenty-two" Ranma corrected.

"One two switch?" Ukyo asked. Ranma nodded. Ranma caught up with Nabiki.

"Gotta bash a nosey," he explained, she raised an eyebrow but nodded. Then he dropped back to where Ukyo was walking. "Okay ready" he said quietly.

Ukyo broke off to the right, heading obliquely, but somewhat obviously for the follower. She stopped a t a stall just short of the now dissimilating man. Ranma meanwhile slipped left. As Ukyo gathered the man's attention Ranma did a quick change, reversing her jacket as well. As she re-emerged Ukyo tipped a nod to let her know, and then hurried back to the group.

Ranma waited, weasley was going to walk right past her. He even took the time to check her out, but failed to make the connection. The next thing the man knew he was face first into a wall, held up by one hand around his neck and another firmly planted in his kidneys, holding his locked out wrist.

"Who sent you?" hissed a woman's voice, full of promised violence.

"Uh?" he queried, face full of plaster.

"Talk or break," the voice said, "Your choice!"  
"Ohlmin" the man gasped "it were Ohlmin, sent us ta watch nought more.""

"Good boy" the voice added, before brutally bashing his head into the wall and sending him into blessed unconsciousness.

O

O

"So?" Nabiki asked as the once again male Ranma caught up with the group.

"Some guy called Ohlmin" Ranma replied, "Spying on us that's all."

"Arena?" Nabiki mused.

"Tomolo mentioned him" Ukyo interjected. "Big mover in the slaver's guild, only really enters the games for fun. Odds on favourite."

"Ah" mused Nabiki connecting the dots.

"We've been rumbled" Ranma agreed.

"Huh?" asked Akane.  
"No now sis" Nabiki replied offhandedly, causing the younger girl to fume.

"That Place?" Ukyo suggested, pointing to a pub nearby, partly due to thirst and partly to defuse little miss –tantrum and toy.

"We might as well check it out" Ranma agreed, and so they did.

The Dog and Duck was a dive, little more could be said for it. Beer came in small or large, either of which was served inn a tankard best described as 'nearly clean.' Apparently it also did the best pies in the city, but it helped nobody asked what the meat was. Needless to say the Nerimites left soon after looking in.

"You're just being picky" Ukyo grumbled.

"No" Nabiki argued, "I'm not. I'm being sensible."

"Ukyo" Ranma broke in, "there are other pubs"

"Aye" she agreed, "but that one was closest."

In the end they found a middle ground. Two streets further on they came to a place called 'the roundhouse.' And a little while after that they were all sat around a table inside with drinks of the local 'ale.'

"Right guys" Nabiki said, "lets talk profits," and her eyes gleamed in the dark.

O

O

O

The time in between that and the games was a mess of frenetic activity. Back at the repose the fighters were honing their skills. For the first time since the re-union Ryoga got to see just how much Ranma had improved and it scared the hell out of him. Sure he had kept up his training but there had been distractions. The dark turn in Ranma's life had apparently left him with little to do but train and train harder. Both of them had reached a level where you had to train an awful lot to get even small increases but somehow Ranma had found the time.

They sparred. Ryoga was soundly thrashed. Noty being able to do their more collaterally orientated effects had limited the lost boy far more than the pig-tailed one, but there was an extra edge their too.

"Ranma" Ryoga asked in a rest moment," something's changed."

"In my style?" Ranma guessed and Ryoga nodded, "Yup."

"Well?" Ryoga demanded.

"Xian Pu and Mu tse" Ranma replied darkly, snapping the towel off from around his neck and stepping back out into the sun. A few precise stretches later he was once more whirling his new blade around his body in a lethal web of steel.

Ryoga shook his head, up until now he had been able to keep up but even the idea of stepping back out there now sent aches through his weary muscles.

"He's a bloody machine" grumbled Ukyo, who had been going through hell these last few days. "Just ain't natural!" she grumbled. She was resting her arm from where she had pulled it trying one of her patented 'swats' with the somewhat shorter weapon she was using.

"I should go look in on Akane" Ryoga stated, missing Ukyo roll her eyes, "she might be getting bored cooped up in there." With that he walked back into the building proper, past the small crowd of adoring onlookers.

"Bloody stuck up…." Ukyo grumbled, trailing off into mutters. "What I need is a drink."

"Ukyo no!" Ranma commanded, suddenly pausing his katas. He hadn't turned, or even appeared to be listening, but somehow he had known. "You can't train with that stuff inside you."  
"Never heard of Drunken boxing?" she retorted, half serious.  
"And when you have learnt from a master of the style then you may try it," he replied, turning towards her, raw steel blade still in hand. His brilliant blue-grey eyes bored into hers. "But until then you stay sharp."  
"My father always said 'a drink keeps the wrist tight'," she retorted, anger simmering.

"Your father thought Genma would be a good role model" Ranma replied, the steel in his voice more apparent now.

"What are you saying about my dad?" Ukyo growled. At this point the old Ranma might have stuttered, tried to defuse things, but Ranma had changed.

"Either call me a liar" he said, with threat in his voice, "or come at me. But don't pretend you didn't hear me!" Ukyo growled and whipped up her axe. She came at him, a mix of fury and time honed skill. Skill diluted by too much time on the sauce and too little in the dojo.

"You were better when you were ten" Ranma chided, dodging the swirling blade with contemptuous ease. "Faster too."

"I'll kill you!" Ukyo called, redoubling her efforts.

"Not. As. Long. As. You. Keep. Wasting. Your. Life. Drinking" Ranma retorted, dodging and weaving through her frenzied attacks. With the final word he stepped in, a sloping parry with his blade seeing off her axe and a single palm-strike planting her into the wall. As she lay there panting and wheezing for breath he walked over.

"Ukyo" he began, "I always respected you. Up until the day I heard you lost the shop. Whatever hell you think your life is without the booze its sending you to the real one far too fast with it." She thought about trying to get up but his words had struck home. It had taken every penny she had, and most of what Konatsu had saved to get her back into business after they foreclosed the first time. She remembered swearing to him at the time that she would dry out. But she hadn't, and now….

"I'm going for a wash," she said, pulling herself upright, "I'll see you at dinner." Ranma didn't turn, once more he appeared lost in his katas, steel mask firmly in place.

o

o

Dinner was a quiet affair. All the Nerimites were sat around the table absorbed in their own selves. Gos was reworking his theory on magical matrices, his sixteenth draught, Nabiki her figures, as altered by the day's haggling. Akane was still pouting, she had been ever since the others had told her flat that she wasn't good enough to enter the sword competition, that Ranma had subsequently demonstrated the difference in skill levels, by disarming her seven times in a row, had rubbed her even further the wrong way. So she had retreated to her room and refused to come out, for anything other than mealtimes, until she got an apology; she was still waiting. Ranma Ryoga and Ukyo were all far too busy focussing on the morning to even think about conversations.

"So how are my favourite foreigners today?" the chirpy voice of Tomolo broke in. "As the barman said to the horse, why the long faces?"

"Forgive us Tomolo-san" Nabiki supplied, "we have a big day tomorrow."

"Ah yes," he agreed enthusiastically, "You are entering the games, no?"

"Indeed we are Tomolo-san" Nabiki agreed.

"An' we're gonna' win" added Ranma quietly, before returning to his meal. Nabiki theatrically hushed him.

"Don't tell anyone" she said. Tomolo raised an eyebrow. "Now look what you have done" Nabiki continued, "he's suspicious."

"Who me?" asked Tomolo, getting into the act.  
"If you promise not to tell anyone then we'll let you into a secret," Nabiki stage-whispered.

"Go on" Tomolo replied, leaning over and making an 'x' sign across his heart.

"We've got a secret weapon" Nabiki hissed.

"What is it?" Tomolo asked. At which point Nabiki pointed to Ranma. He had just received another plateful of food and was hovering it up monster fashion. "We're gonna cover them in soy sauce," she whispered. At which point everyone but Ranma burst out laughing.

"What do I have something on my face?" replied the human beetroot.

O

O

O

The heat of the noonday sun smacked into Ranma like a hammer blow, sucking the breath from his lungs. After the cool of the assembling area below the sudden blazing heat of the arena had a physical force. Then came the noise of the crowd. This was a festival day and the stadium was packed way beyond its design capacity, each and every one of those patrons seemed to be shouting at the top of their lungs. It had been very different during the morning unarmed competition and already Ranma was unhappy about being forced to fight with a sword.

Ranma looked around as he walked towards the centre of the sandy arena floor, his jaw clenched but his eyes wide. Above the screaming banks of spectators were hundreds of fluttering flags, soaring gulls and above them all the far off vista of the snow capped mountains.

"Kills the actors" cut in a voice.  
"Huh?" Ranma asked, turning to see a dark skinned man with a broad smile.

"Competing with that," the man explained, "kills you or brings the performance of your life"

"Ah" Ranma agreed, catching up. The man had a think accent and could easily have passed for a Jamaican on earth in all but dress. He had never seen a Jamaican sporting two feet's worth of broad bladed steel falchion. His clothes were simple and adapted for warmer climes. They were also covered with a hard leather jerkin.

"You ain't been here before then" the man surmised. Ranma didn't answer. "Look brother, no offence but newbies never make it more than two rounds, sorry them's the breaks. So hows about you an me match up for the first one. Give a guy an edge ya know…"

"Sure" replied Ranma, without cracking a smile.

Shortly before coming up each fighter had been required to present their blade. Each one was checked for unfair edges, and then ensured to be at least mostly blunt. Finally each one had been covered in a thick layer of a black tarry like substance so 'they can see it from the stands.'

Following the man over to one of the marked fighting squares Ranma rolled his shoulders, stretching the stitching on his jerkin. He had thought long and hard about whether to wear one or not and decided that not doing so would attract more attention than Nabiki wanted at this point.

"Don't splat them too fast" Nabiki had said, "you do and the odds'll shorten faster than the queue for the dinner table when Akane cooks."

The man stepped into the square and stretched a little. Each fighting square was a few meters across and outlined with posts at each corner. Every one had a judge to watch over them. The rules were simple, step outside the square and you forfeit, get hit in any vital location and you forfeit, or get hit three times in any non-vital location and similarly you are out. Other than that you're fair game once the match starts.

Ranma nodded to the judge then his opponent, the man smiled back, confidence showing in his beaming smile.

"Begin!" called the judge and the fight was on.

Ranma's opponent came in fast and low, a disembowelling cut that would at least cross a man's eyes when it connected. Ranma caught himself before he launched his counter, one that would have spread smiler's teeth across the stands. Instead he parried low and faked a clumsy dodge. Smiler just smiled all the harder.For the next three minutes Ranma kept him going, narrow dodges and lucky parries all tat apparently separated him from defeat. Then the guy got frustrated, and lashed out with a ridiculously telegraphed overhand. There was nothing Ranma could do, he parried high and cross-checked the other man, who in turn landed six feet out of the square. Smiler landed with a thump and a crash.

"Out!" called the judge. "Red wins."

Water was brought and an employee raced off to find a new opponent.

"What the hell was that man?" Smiler asked

"Matsubeto Kakuto Ryu" Ranma replied, mopping his forehead with the damp cloth provided, more to fake some sweat than to cool him down.

"Say what?" Smiler asked.

"The best of the finest fighting forms my culture ever produced" Ranma explained.

"You were playin' me?"

"Sorry, them's the breaks" Ranma replied pointedly. To his credit smiler didn't take it personally. Instead he cracked a smile.

"May put a few coins on you meself," he said, sticking a hand out, "Luck." And with that he was gone.

Ranma's next bout was a little tougher but the girl in question all but knocked herself out of the competition when she failed to balance her oversized two-handed weapon having missed Ranma again. As it happened she didn't, stopping herself on the line but within a heartbeat Ranma had drawn a big black 'X' across her back and she was out.

In his third he met a guy who should have quit already. At some point the guy in question had taken a blow across his face. As a result he couldn't see out of his left eye and staggered every time he turned too fast. Ranma put him on his ass quickly, saving him the embarrassment of a longer match.

Then that was it, Ranma was in the quarter-finals, and for the first time he saw the favourite. Ohlmin was an imposing sight, tall, bronzed and bald but for a scalp-lock he carried himself with a serious fighter's ease. He had completely disdained the use of a jerkin and even a shirt. He had also yet to even break a sweat.

"Meat!" called a voice that was more grunt than grace. Ranma turned. "You is Meat!" the voice re-asserted. The pig-tailed martial artist found himself facing a very raggedy looking Dwarf. The man was at the most five foot tall but nearly that across his shoulders, and smelt like every inch had been bathed in sewerage. In his hands he was clutching a wicked looking barbed scimitar, and there was blood mixed in with the tar. "I eat meat!" the dwarf explained.

Ranma hit him with his patented smile number forty-eight, "My aren't you a clever boy. I bet you can even tie your laces by now."

The dwarf responded with rage, and a rush. Ranma, expecting nothing less, parried and dodged around the smaller man, only to find that he was faster than he looked. Ranma was forced to dodge again, and this time he lost a piece of his jerkin in the process.

"Stop!" called the judge, and the two of them separated.

"Oi" he called, trying to attract the judge's attention to the sliced jerkin. The man blatantly ignored it.

"Match will begin. Ready-"

"Oi" Ranma called again.

"Go!"

Immediately the dwarf came in, fast even for Ranma's experience. He was weaving a deadly pattern with the wicked blade he carried and had an eviller smirk on his face. "Amazing what a little gold can buy in Pathandaway" he smirked. Then the penny dropped, the sharp sword, the blood on the blade, even the supernatural speed, the sneaky bastard had bribed his way in with a weapon he shouldn't have.

Ranma parried fast, and dodged high, sailing clear over the little man's head, only to find him ready as he landed. The dwarf laughed as he came in again.

"Meat!"

Ranma responded with a cocky smirk and a twitch of his left hand. The guy was fast sure but he was far more concerned with hurting Ranma than protecting himself.

Again the smelly short-ass attacked, this time with a series of lightning fast overhand cuts. Ranma parried fast, but was forced to back up as he did, leading the man around into a spiral.

"Ha!" the dwarf laughed, "I got you now!" and indeed it looked like he did. Instead however Ranma stepped in with his own, lightening fast, strike. Only it missed. The dwarf had just enough time to start a mocking laugh before he was lifted off his feet by a crazily strong updraft.

"Huh?" he said, looking up at the perfect time to receive his broad black stripe from hairline to hairy chin. Ranma followed the strike with smirk number one "Saotome Ranma never loses," and then fell over with a biting pain in his leg. The sword had bitten into it just above the knee.

"Shit!" he swore whipping it away from him as hard as he could.

"Illegal weaponry!" the judge called, perhaps a little late, "Blue disqualified." Ranma managed a growl and that was it. He was far too busy focussing his ki to reducing the damage caused.

"Congratulations" the judge said, "you're through," but there was a seriously unfriendly smile on his face, "you have five minutes before your match." Then he walked off.

"If I were you," came a voice, gravely and unkind, "I'd quit now." Ranma looked up, and there was Ohlmin, smiling. "You have done well so far, for a newbie, but your next match is against me, and you never stood a chance before the leg wound."

"Saotome Ranma never loses" Ranma retorted. Ohlmin smiled, it wasn't a kind face.

"Don't make it personal boy" he sneered, "the last person who did is chained to a mill near Bremon, by his nose."

"Screw you!" Ranma retorted, his efforts to patch his leg dampening his normally witty repartee.

"That's a mistake boy!" Ohlmin chided, all fake friendliness gone. "Now you're going to have to pay."

Four minutes later Ranma was stood in his 'red corner' of the square facing the frowning Ohlmin. The problem wasn't that Ranma was there against his advice is wasn't even that he standing happily on his injured leg, even bouncing from foot to foot, no the frown was due to that cocky smirk the younger man dared to wear when coming up against him.

The judge stepped forward, "Ready?" he asked, and, Ohlim struck. He smacked his sabre into Ranma's bad knee. "Foul!" cried the judge, earning him a 'boo' from the bleachers. Now ordinarily the rules would have seem the cheat thrown from the competition, but there was no way that the judges would do that to the local champion. Ranma was hopping around in small circles in the background as the judges conferred. Needless to say Ohlmin didn't even have the grace to look worried.

"We have decided upon a handicap" the judges announced, the crowd held silent, "Ohlmin-" in the background there was a pointed cough, "Sorry, Master Ohlmin, will have to score an extra blow before he can be accounted the victor." The crowd jeered.

"That means you need two vital strikes or four non-vital," the judge explained to the local 'hero.'

"Fine" he replied, "now may we please get on with it?"

"Of course Master Ohlmin" the judge replied. "Contenders to their corners" he demanded. Ranma shot him a lethal look and limped over to the red area.

"You belong to me boy," Ohlmin rasped threateningly. Ranma rolled his shoulders, clicking his neck, focussed and put his foot down.

But the damage had been done, the leg hurt like hell. Just from the strike Ranma knew this man had some serious power, skill and speed. He could have taken Kuno blindfolded, one handed, and standing on one leg. The problem was that Ranma was going to have to take him while standing on one leg, with a sword and having fought through a whole extra competition. Palm-strikes and kicks just wouldn't count.

"Begin" called the judge, and the two of them began circling. Against any other opponent Ranma would have dissimilated more, but as Ohlmin had already demonstrated he was too sharp for that. By circling he was also finalising his opinions on how usable the leg was and Ranma could see he knew.

"Damn" Ranma thought, "this bastard is good." Ranma went in for a testing feint, and took a stripe across his off arm for his trouble. The man had been holding back! Ranma quickly span into a wall of sword spinning defence. Ohlmin was driven back, but his smile had gloat written all over it. As Ranma got the distance he needed he could feel the throb in his arm, but more importantly he could feel the trickle on his shin, his wound had opened again.

"Non-Vital" accorded the Judge.

"This time," mocked the slave master. Ranma had to face facts, with the hole in his leg, and his all too limited experience with this blade he was at a severe disadvantage. Unless he could shift the odds he was screwed. And if he lost so did the crew, they were invested in him up to the hilt, counting on him not to lose.

His train of thought was interrupted as Ohlmin came at him. Ranma lashed out with a combination of parries and feints that would have left Kuno drooling in envy, but he needed every single one. As Ohlmin pressed harder Ranma was forced to begin weaving in and out of the strikes, taxing his injured leg all the more. From the stands all that could be seen was the blinding flashes and resonant sounds of steel on steel. Each opponent was blowing up a maelstrom of sand around the fight, and every parry and thrust was done at speed too fast for the human eye.

Then the leg bucked. Not a lot, and only for a split second, but it was long enough. Ranma took a strip across his stomach. In a shot Ohlmin was backed away and smiling about his victory.

"Non-vital" ruled the judge.

"What?" demanded Ohlmin.

"Armour block, non-vital" replied the judge more forcefully, "You will fight on!" The slaver growled and turned back to the Neriman. He paced a bit and ten dropped into a fighting crouch, all smiles gone.

"Fight!" ordered the judge.

"Boy you have lost" sneered Ohlmin, "by the time I am finished with you you're gonna wish that midwife slapped you just a little bit harder." Then it hit Ranma like a ton of bricks, all this time he had been playing the dumb-ass, assuming rules that didn't exist.

He lured Ohlmin in with a poorly faked stumble. Ohlmin in turn faked an over-committed lunge. Only Ranma didn't play the game. He stepped in and slapped the retreating blade of his opponent wide out. That in itself wouldn't have been enough but Ranma muddied the water still further by throwing his own blade. Ohlmin parried with his arm, but didn't see the truth of the move. Behind his sword came the rest of Ranma. Ohlmin was fast, he got a solid strike in but by then it was too late, Ranma lashed out with his good leg and pounded nearly a hundred kicks into the larger man's body, each one to a vital location.

Pain exploded across Ohlmin's body, from his crown to his knee and every vital spot in between, he felt like he had been hit by a stampede. The next thing he knew the ground was rising up to hit him. Her landed, fully spread, three feet out of the ring. Not far but plenty far enough.

"Out!" the judge cried, "Forfeit!" he declared. "Blue wins!" The cry echoed around the stadium, suddenly devoid of all other noise. Then the crowd exploded, cries, wails, denials, jeers and a thousand other sounds echoed down, blotting out all else. And on the sand every one was a nail driven into Ohlmin's ego. Coughing blood as he lay there on the sand he swore not to forget.

Ranma raised his hands in triumph, and the crowd cheered with him. Beside him the judge clapped and above him the gulls screamed. It was a perfect moment.

"Next bout!" the judge declared.

"No way man!" cut in a voice. "I forfeit!" the voice came from the other contender, a man who had got through more by luck and lubricated judges than skill. He saw the local champion lying in the dust, coughing blood, and decided then and there it wasn't worth it.

"Are you sure" asked the judge, fearing a riot.

"Not for love or money" the man replied, he could see the footprints on Ohlmin's body, had heard the crack of his ribs.

"Last chance" the judge asked, desperate.

"I told you! No Way!" the man repeated, pulling his jerkin off and walking away.

"What's yer name?" the judge asked Ranma out of the blue.

"Saotome Ranma!" the warrior replied.

"Contender Withdraws!" the judge announced, "Saotome Ranma wins the Sword!" The crowd exploded all over again.

"Take my advice son" the judge continued to Ranma, "take your winnings and leave the Pathandaway. Fast!"

Ranma just smiled, they should'a listened, Saotome Ranma never loses.


	11. The long road

**Chapter 12**

"We'll stop here for a bit" Nabiki pronounced. They had left the Metryll raod behind and were now travelling across open grassland, punctuated only by rolling foothills. For most that halt was more than welcome. Nabiki herself had enthusiastically taken charge of one of their two wagons, expecting the going to be easier. She had been cursing that decision ever since. The damn world seemed completely unaware of inventions like suspension or even decent padding. Her rear end felt like it had bounced off every rock between here and Pathandaway.

Their departure had been more than a little hurried. Even before the finale of the games Nabiki had been in full wheeler-dealer mode. A lot of people had lost a great deal of money that day as a result of the Neriman accolade storm. Between the lot of them they had rocketed out of obscurity to take every big prize in the games. Some citizens had desperately tried to wager their way out of debt only to lose again. Cue Nabiki, she swept around the local merchants who were worst hit and offered to buy their debts for goods. Of course they had to accept near cost prices for their goods but they did get to walk out without their loansharks eyeing their kneecaps.

The dealing had gone on late into the night, with the last trader leaving the quiet repose and his dearly bought goods long after midnight. Through the long afternoon and evening Ranma had been by Nabiki's side. Ever since one punter had tried to go back on his deal and got silly enough to draw a knife on the ice queen he had decided she needed protection. She hadn't objected, his presence made prices a lot easier to manipulate. It was only when the buzz finally died down that she realised that the fool had been standing on his injured leg all the time.

She had leapt up after the last person left and finally allowed herself to celebrate. A celebration that involved a happy shout, a hug of her 'bodyguard' and a substantial kiss. It was only after the other participant in the kiss's expression turned from cute confusion to an outright wince that she connected the dots. As the realisation lit up in her face he shrugged as if that would explain things, and she responded by slapping him.

So here they were, stopped in the foothills of the Aershtyl mountains and she was even more confused than ever. Ever since Pathandaway something fundamental seemed to have changed in their relationship. The final vestiges of the self-absorbed boy from Nerima appeared to have fallen away and he had been exhibitin a newer more considerate nature, he was even being nicer to Akane. She had promised herself that she would think on it during the trip but between the demons-in-draft-horse-form and the butt-bruiser seat she had just never had the patience.

"Thank god" offered Akane, swinging from the saddle to land heavily on the ground. For all her professed expertise she was probably th person having the most trouble riding. Ukyo and her had started in a similar boat, experienced enough to know the basics but totally unprepared for full says in the saddle. Where Ukyo and Ranma had adapted, working together to find what worked, Akane hadn't. Her temperament demanded that the horse do exactly what it was told when it was told. The result was that she had been fighting the poor animal every step of the way.

Ranma had honestly tried to help, even swapping mounts without protest when she clamed that hers was a bum rap. Of course it helped that he had taken to riding like he took to anything else physical. Within days of leaving the city Ranma was riding as if born in the saddle. Where everybody else ended a day sore and abraded he still found the energy to do Katas and train with his sword. In the evenings he had taken double watches without protest and even spelled Ukyo on the cooking without being asked. He had even managed to avoid antagonising Ryoga much. As he swung out of his own saddle and went straight into a jog to help the lost boy with his own horses Nabiki had to fight back the urge to curse the irksome bastard.

"Okay" agreed Ukyo, also swinging off her mount, but managing to stand easily when she landed. She may have been rubbing her sore rear but, unlike Akane, after a stretch she was soon walking fine. She glanced over at Ranma, already moving to the back of the chuck wagon to find lunch and shook her head. She couldn't get her head around this new Ranma. Where the hell had he learnt to care. She watched as Nabiki walked over, peering over the pig-tailed man's shoulder, and saw him pass her a sweetmeat from the jar without even turning around.

"Where are we now?" asked Gos. It wasn't a good sign, he had been paired with Ryoga for all sorts of reasons and saving the pig-man from getting lost had been one of the largest. If the fanged guy's direction sense was catching then they were all in trouble.

"Back end of beyond and getting further away" Ukyo replied, pulling a hip flask from her pocket and taking a swig. Suddenly a flash caught her eye and she turned to the trail behind them, sure enough the caravan was still there. It had been behind them since Aeryk and had shown no sign at all of catching up. Hardly surprising considering the pace they were setting but still the sight was starting to worry her.

In the beginning Akane had suggested joining up with them, for mutual defence and the like. It had seemed a good idea until Ranma shot it down. All he had needed to do was remind them of the bounty hunter that had attacked them in Aeryk. They had passed a week there, resting and replenishing supplies before they chanced the waste. The fool had tried to take them all himself, creeping into their rooms in the middle of the night. Only Ranma had been on watch, the poor idiot had tried to use his knife and now he would never use the hand he had held it in again.

They were all wanted people. It seems there were enough losers from Pathandaway that the city itself had put up money to have them returned for punishment. Following the revelations about their pet dragon come sewer system's untimely release the crime had been traced to the Nerimans and when the city found out they had apparently decided that the lot off them had cheated in some way to win the games. The reward for one of them would tempt a saint, if they collected the set they would never have to work again. It was, as they say, not good, hence no contact with anyone as long as they could avoid it.

Ryoga bounced down from his seat in the front of their stores wagon and immediately headed over to the groaning, grumbling Akane. The two of them were starting to make Ukyo sick. He fawned over her and she accepted it as her due, and should anyone point out how unfair this was on the lost boy he would bristle. Add to that that the two of them were distinctly less than subtle when they spent their nights together and you had a recipe that was designed to get on Ukyo's nerves.

"Any more of that jerky?" Ukyo asked, turning her back on the pair's display and moving over to the back of the wagon where Ranma and Nabiki stood. The young man in question nodded and passed her a few strips of the dried beef.

"How long till we get to the waste?" she asked, prompting the other two to look at each other.

"We should reach there later this evening" Ranma replied, somehow he had become the unofficial guide. His long experience on the road had leant him an aura of expertise that the others had instinctively come to rely on, at least when Akane or Ryoga weren't arguing.

"Any idea what to expect?" Ukyo asked, watching the others for some sign of what they had been discussing.

"Its not good" Nabiki confided. "If the stories are true we are looking at something that makes salt flats look lively. From the moment we enter it until the moment we reach the Bremon mountains all we've got is what we bring with us."

"Ouch," Ukyo observed, "have we got enough?"

"Food? Yes. Water? Maybe," Nabiki informed her, "If it's as hot as the deserts we know then it'll be touch and go."

"We could travel at night" Ukyo offered, "That should help."

"We thought of that" Ranma agreed, "and we may well have to. Even so the problem is the horses. They're gonna go though water a lot faster than we will."

"So we ditch some and take to the wagons" Ukyo guessed.

"Actually we were thinking of ditching one of the wagons" Nabiki replied. "we'll feed the animals we're taking up as much as we can before we do and then take only what we really have to."

"And hope there is a water supply the other side?" Ukyo added unenthusiastically. The other two nodded in agreement. "When were you going to share this?"

"This evening when we stop" Nabiki replied, "no point in having the argument for any longer than we have to" she added looking at the couple by Akane's horse.

"I'll go take Gos's his grub" Ranma offered, the other pair looked over to where the young man was sat. His face was buried in another one of the books they had managed to afford, his brain full of higher mystical truths.

"Make sure he eats" Nabiki ordered. Ever since the young man's first visit to the library his mind had been firmly elsewhere and it had been getting worse. These days he rarely managed more than a few sentences to the others before his tomes drew him back in. Nabiki had once made the mistake of asking him what he had discovered but only once, the answer had been so far above her head that she had been left feeling punch drunk.

Of course as another result of that conversation she put herself to sleep at night with one of those same tomes. The hole in her knowledge was simply unacceptable to her so she was fixing it.

o

o

They set off again less than an hour later, once more setting a brisk pace and leaving the hills behind them. Less than two hours after that they finally got their first look at the waste.

As far as the eye could see flat, sun-baked earth stretched into the distance. The line of destruction was shockingly abrupt, one side of the long curving border there were grasses and trees, the other there was only earth. There was not one single sign of life anywhere in view across that line. As Nabiki watched a bird approached the border and swerved away as if struck.

"Oh my god!" Akane observed, truly shocked by the twisting of nature that the waste represented, "what on Earth is that?"

"We ain't on earth sugar" Ukyo observed "and what do you think it is?" she finished in a condescending tone. The two of them had been rubbing each other the wrong way for a long time and it was getting worse. When Ukyo had found herself a 'friend' in Aeryk Akane had been openly rude, only stopping just short of the word whore.' Ukyo had responded by rubbing her cooking ability in Akane's face. And so it went on.

"Nabs?" Ranma asked.

"Huh?" she replied, looking up from her book. Ranma had told her before that her ride would be much easier on her rear if she made an effort to steer around the holes but she hadn't taken his advice. Simply put she didn't find driving a cart that engaging. As long as her horses were happy to follow the wagon in front she was happy to spent the time doing other things. "Oh" she added having seen the newest permutation of their view. "Guys we'll stop at the edge" she announced.

"Why?" demanded Akane, eager to get the days travel over with already and being very careful to protect her 'I can ride as well as any of you' attitude. Any hint that this halt was on her account and she would be fighting it till doomsday.

"The horses will need time to acclimatise themselves to the new terrain" Nabiki lied, "and we have some re-organising to do now we are leaving the hills behind."

"Fine" her sister grumbled, turning her horse back towards the broder.

O

O

The halt was hardly more restful than the travel. No sooner had the stopped than Nabiki was handing out jobs. She and Ukyo had discussed their needs in more detail during lunch and she had a mental list of things that needed done. For once nobody seemed inclinded to argue.

Ranma and Ryoga went off to collect firewood; Ukyo took Gos to find a water source, led by his magic; Akane was given the task of dealing with the stubborn draught animals, and unloading one of the wagons. Nabiki was checking and rechecking the list. Gos's sudden revelation that there was a water supply nearby was causing some serious recalculations. With the extra water she could refill the barrels and undo the diminishment since they left town. That meant that they could keep more horses and possibly even the second wagon.

O

O

Night fell late on the plains, the dying sun bathing the waste in burnt oranges, magentas and beautiful reds. The sunset was observed by very few from the Nerimans camp though, most had turned in early so as to be brighter for the early start in the morning. Ranma, as was his custom had been the one to volunteer for first watch. Unusually Nabiki had stayed up too, and now watching the alien sun set over the desert, the two of them were sat side by side on a fallen tree.

"Pretty," she observed quietly.

"Very," he agreed, letting her cuddle in closer as the first of the cool night airs blew in.

"Ranma" she began.

"Yup" he agreed.

"Thanks" she said, not explaining. Instead she rose, stretched and smiled at him before heading off to her tent. Ranma was left more than a little shaken, that girl was just too cute. And what the hell was that supposed to mean.

He settled in for the rest of his watch, thinking of more interesting things, like Ken-jitsu sword combinations.

A little after midnight he finally allowed himself to sleep, turning the watch over to the dozy chef.

O

O

Ukyo hated night watch. As much as she knew that it was necessary she just could'nt stand the mind-numbing boredom of it. Still it was her turn and she was determined to do her job. She suppressed a rude thought about Akane and 'jobs,' instead walking to the chuck wagon and pulling down a water skin.

As she took a swig she briefly wondered why she hadn't seen it there when she came on watch but shrugged the thought aside.

She had just enough time to curse her mistake as the drugs in the planted skin combined with a powerful sleep enchantment to rob her of her consciousness. Her last view was of the ugly bald face of Ohlmin rippling into visibility with the cruellest look on his face.

"Got her," she heard him offer smugly, "now get the others secured" he added, turning her onto her back. "Business before pleasure."


	12. The Dying of the light

When Ryoga came to it was to a world of pain, his body ached from his wrists where they were pinioned over his head to his ankles where they were likewise trapped to the wall of the apparently small wooden room he was secured in. Someone had apparently taken the time to get a few good kicks in while he had been unconscious and he could not only feel the bruising on his ribs but taste that familiar tang of blood in his mouth.

His head was still fuzzy for reasons he could not explain but would later find out were leftover effects of the rather powerful magics that had been dropped on him and the sleeping party. Magics that had ensured that they would not wake from their rest even while Olhmin and his crew had snatched them up.

Through that haze Ryoga became dimly aware of something else, the familiar sound of solid objects and flesh. He had heard it enough during his breaking point training to feel the ghost of the impacts and certainly didn't need to see them to know how much they would hurt whoever was on the receiving end.

"Ranma" sounded a desperate female voice, made hoarse by what had to be more pleas of the same and the shed tears of a friend who was watching something she could not bear, "just stay down!" Nabiki pleaded, "for the love of god stay down" he begged.

The voice was coming from outside the wooden room Ryoga was fastened in, quite where he couldn't tell, but then that wasn't particularly new to the young man who had earned the title of 'Lost Boy'. It was answered with something that he couldn't quite make out but the renewal of those wet meaty sounds was more than enough to give the bandanna clad boy a hint of just how little Ranma was playing along.

With immense effort Ryoga turned his aching neck, the throb in one side of his face having extended down from his temple to his shoulder-top, and finally checked about himself.

Two feet to his right Gos was pinioned in a similar way to him, bound with steel cuffs that seemed to flow out of the metal bands that bound the room. He too had obviously taken a tanking, his face puffy and red, one eye swollen over and old blood showing dark along his pale skinned arms. The boy was also gagged thoroughly with something that appeared a great deal more professional than Ryoga was used to seeing. The fledgling mage was also obviously concussed and all but insensate, a sizable lump on his temple offering a probable explanation.

The room, at a second look, turned out to probably be the back of that wagon that had been following them, and it was clearly no stranger to this type of cargo, there being a good dozen other such fastenings ready and waiting for more human cargo.

One of which was as darkly stained as the trails down Gos's arms. Ryoga was no stripling youth anymore, he could recognise blood when he saw it, and combined with the words that were filtering through the wall he had to guess whose it was.

The worst part however was not what he could see but what he couldn't, there was absolutely no sign that the girls had been in here, no sign at all. Which meant all sorts of very dark and nasty things about where exactly they might be now.

This after all was not Nerima, nor even modern Japan, this land was cruel, basic and brutal, the people into whose hands they had fallen even more so. Slowly Ryoga's mind was inching towards some very dark fears about just what sort of use Ohlmin would be putting his female captives to.

Which is when he heard Nabiki's horrified scream again, and the half muffled cry of someone who could only be Ukyo. They at least were apparently still outside and not in pain themselves. Instead apparently they were merely spectators to the hurting of another.

The lack of Akane's voice however had to worry Ryoga, quietly he pleaded with the powers that had hitherto always ignored him that her silence didn't mean what he feared it did.

"Stop" said a commanding voice, one he recognised from the 'favourite' of the games, the man who had sworn revenge and apparently actually found a way to do it, "give him some time to hurt and we'll see how much he likes hearing his women scream" the voice said.

Apparently the muffled sound that followed was rude enough to earn a renewal of the beating despite the order, but then that too was cut short by another order "Stop!" Ohlmin barked, calling to the other folk who were apparently assisting in his 'remonstration' to cease as well, "the bounty is for live thieves" he insisted and for a moment all was quiet but for the muted sobbing of one of the women who had been forced to watch.

Then came the sounds of dragging and a moment later the door at the end o the carriage opened up to reveal the silhouetted forms of two people carrying another and a fourth stepping up behind.

It took Ryoga a few moments to recognise the bloodied tenderised meat the first two were carrying as a person let alone as Ranma, and almost immediately his stomach turned. No matter how rough he felt he knew that the pig tailed martial artist must be feeling it worse.

He had never undergone the breaking point training, and even years of conditioning and harsh training from his father and rivals could never have prepared the young man for this. Blood covered every last inch of his skin, matted his hair and dribbled unheeded from his mouth and a half dozen open wounds. Ryoga couldn't see his erstwhile rival's face but he could see the way that the man was desperately trying to lift his head again and knew that Ranma was still trying to rise.

"Some people don't learn" sneered Ohlmin as the other two unceremoniously dropped Ranma to the floor, "we have enough enchantment on him to mean he can barely lift his arm" the slaver laughed, "and still he wants to fight!"

Ryoga heard the beaten down figure mumble something though his bloodied mouth and even if he couldn't quite follow the words he could tell they weren't pretty and were probably about Ranma not losing, unlike some others. The lost boy's mind recoiled at the sheer obstinacy that was involved.

Ohlmin on the other hand just kicked again. "We hamstrung him, beat the life out of him and took a pry bar to his sword hand" the slaver continued to chuckle, "and still the idiot wanted to fight"

Ryoga tried to say something but his mouth was too dry, his head too fuzzy. From the floor Ranma continued to try to rise, the pain it was causing evident in every line of his abused body.

"This isn't over" Ohlmin offered in a dark promise of pain to come, kneeling to make sure that Ranma heard him, "when I get back we'll heal you up and start again" the slaver insisted, his eyes narrowing as he swore further revenge for his 'humiliation.' He nodded towards a healing draught in it's clay bottle that he had set out of reach from Ranma's lowered position. But Ryoga saw no hint of acknowledgement from the subject.

Ranma spat another insult into Ohlmin's face, receiving another room shaking punch in reply, one that drove the pig tailed man back to the deck.

"Anyone would think he enjoyed the pain" Ohlmin offered, straightening and spitting a bloody gobbit of his own at the fallen warrior, one that also inadvertently told Ryoga things outside hadn't been quite as one sided as their captor was trying to make it appear.

But before he could remark on that the asshole was turning about and heading back through the door, "I wonder if your whore friends will feel the same" the man offered, just to twist that knife too.

Ryoga's rage was immediately welling up, forcing away the muzziness and the confusion as the man who caught them finally confirmed what his intentions were towards the captured women. It was every bit as bad as he had feared.

But even after ten minutes and even after opening some wounds of his own straining against those cuffs the bonds held strong, he had moved not a fraction of an inch from where he started.

Ranma on the other hand had, while Ryoga had been straining he had been dragging himself on his one good hand across the floor of the caravan, towards the door, a broad, wet, dark crimson stain on the floorboards all the way behind him.

"Gotta piss em off" Ryoga heard him say, "use up energy hurting me" the fallen figure mumbled, "make em too sick to hurt the girls" Ranma breathed through bloodied teeth. Then he looked up and Ryoga found his stomach turning again, on the bloodied, split face a further horror lurked, the grey gel-like matter of one eye actually splashed over Ranma's left cheek, the socket a bloody, empty mess.

But in the other, still living blue-grey storm, and beyond the pain, there was something else, a cold hard determination that was refusing to die, a purpose that went beyond the hurt body, beyond the wreck they had left him in, he wasn't seeing Ryoga or even the room, Ranma's good eye was full of the consequences for three other people if he didn't get up, didn't force his broken body to do the impossible, again.

And at last it made sense to Ryoga, why his sometime friend wasn't letting this one go, why he was spending so much effort to stay awake. It wasn't about self preservation, it wasn't about fears of being woken with a bucket of water, it was about protecting the others. Apparently Ranma had decided the only way to stop the captors hurting the girls was to tire them out, to turn their stomachs too, to remove the desire to hurt the similarly enspelled, defenceless women.

Even with his face maimed, hand a mess, his legs unable to work and undoubtedly a myriad of other injuries the pigtailed martial artist was still trying, was dragging himself across the floor to keep at his self appointed task, with absolutely no regard for the personal consequences.

Ryoga had never felt so small. Here he was, the one with the thick skin and the ability to soak up damage like a proverbial sponge, and he was comparatively unhurt, when he had strained his bonds he had given up and suddenly he knew he had given up far too early, that Ranma certainly wouldn't have stopped for a little pain and blood.

It was the story of his life, Ranma always that one step better, that one step more, the center of things while Ryoga was on the outside, lost. Only Akane had been different, that one Ryoga had won, but even now he knew, deep down, that it was a hollow victory, that the competition had never been fair, that had he wanted her Ranma could have…

And Ryoga would have lost her too. Like he lost his battles, like he lost his sister, lost his house, lost those bread fights, lost his humanity to the curse, lost his way. When they had needed him he had lost consciousness, when Ranma had been fighting he had been here, as good as miles away, he had been as good as lost, again.

The cold dark depression of Ryoga's mind settled into him like a shroud, extinguishing all else, blotting out the fears and the hatreds, washing away all his conscious mind into oblivion. It's dark ki infused his body, flowed through his limbs and his heart.

He stood up, there was a brief flicker of meaningless pain as the skin from his wrists and hands was torn by the now broken cuffs and another from his ankles as they likewise parted the forged iron that should have held the strength of twenty men, he ignored it and turned for the door.

Outside he was only dimly aware of the bloodied grass and the sudden confusion of the captors. With a dark enshrouded arm he lashed out and swept aside the ones who came towards him, headed for the other enclosed wagon, another covered caravan, from where there were coming sounds that twisted that darkness further still.

Another flare of pain exploded in his back, once more he ignored it as he obliterated the door and stepped inside. His far from rational mind wasn't really aware of the whole evil picture, of the bound friends whose clothes had been torn away, or the real meaning of the way the men who were with them were positioned. His mind only saw the targets it had been looking for and he systematically stepped across the small room his steel hard fists wreaking dire retribution as he righted this wrong.

A bearded face crumpled into crimson mush under a swung fist, another one, keen and sharp nosed followed soon behind as a palm strike ruptured it against the back wall with a sound not unlike an overripe melon hitting a paving slab.

But the second hit had been slower, softer, and the third was worse still. By the time the dark being that had been Ryoga had cleared the compartment it was beginning to fall, unable to work out why even as it's lifeblood was running from it's wounds in near rivers.

O

O

O

Ryoga woke up to a world of pain, agony searing up from his wrist and ankle, from the small of his back and the length of every limb. But blessed relief followed a moment later as something cool and wonderful fell across him.

"Not too much" chided a muffled voice bearing the rasp of injury but the clear precise tones of someone that could only be Gos.

"But" replied another voice, it's tone and accent uniquely Osakan and female, it was Ukyo and there was an element in the way she had spoken that Ryoga had never heard before, and was too spun out to recognise as anything more than different. One thing it wasn't though was her normal abrasive.

"Akane" replied Gos, and that apparently settled that because the cool, pleasant wave was gone and the pain was back, if somewhat less severe this time.

"Are you awake?" Gos asked as the renewed ache dragged a groan from the Lost boy.

"Urg" he replied, which was more or less a hell of an achievement considering the state he was in.

"You're very hurt" Gos supplied, his voice still baring the traces of his own injuries but as calm and level as he could make it, "but we've stopped the bleeding and the muscles are starting to knit again" he supplied, which by extension identified the substance that had brought that blessed relief as one of their precious healing draughts.

"Ranma" Ryoga gasped, part of him rebelling at the very idea that he should be receiving any of the magic restorative when Ranma had suffered so much more.

"He and Nabiki are gone" Gos replied, his tone carrying some sincere disapproval, and concern.

Concern that Ryoga completely missed, "Gone?" he asked, his tone fearing the very worst and with that cold dark pit of despair threatening. Gos had to actually turn him back towards him to stave off another descent, one which the mystically inclined young man had no belief Ryoga would survive.

"Not like that!" he insisted, the raise in his own voice causing him to wince in pain, "they are alive" he asserted, his eyes holding Ryoga's as he willed the lost boy to hear him. "I used the first draught on him, on his ankles" Gos explained, "he wouldn't take anymore" he added, a tone of regretful concern returning to his voice. "He and Nabiki went after the ones you didn't get" Gos explained.

As Ryoga had powered out of the slave wagon the flare of power had been enough to shake Gos at least partly out of his confusion, for long enough to realise that not only was he suddenly free but also that the healing draught that Ohlmin had been planning on using to patch Ranma up were now within reach.

Gos had splashed enough over himself to clear away the lingering concussion and then the rest over the fallen friend in the bloody smear on the floor, luckily getting to that recently made maiming at the back of Ranma's before it became more permanent, beyond even the draught's ability to heal. Like the eye already was.

He had helped the broken fighter to his feet and staggered out on Ryoga's trail, just in time to see the lost boy shot in the back as he forged his way up the steps to the other caravan and he had made the only decision that he had felt he could.

He had gone around the caravan that Ryoga had just entered, dumped the barely conscious Ranma onto the flatbed seat and climbed up behind him. Then he had taken the whole lot and gotten as lost as he could, as fast as he could.

Ohlmin was still out there someplace, undoubtedly furious as hell itself at losing his captives, and with a half dozen good men to help him refind them, nobody had been in any fit state to stop him then and to be honest Gos was in no mind to try.

The simple truth was that he was scared, and had rarely been more so in his life, all the mess in Nerima had never seemed as nasty as those few men and their dark plans. Even finding the crushed head of the mage in the back of the wagon when he had finally dared to look hadn't done much for his courage since. Right now all he wanted to do was curl up into a ball and blot out the world.

But he wasn't and even if he didn't know it himself that was counting for a lot with the people whose lives he had actually saved.

"Gos" Ryoga asked, "Akane?" he said, and he saw the new mage's face fall in reply.

"It's not good" Gos offered, the pain in his voice reminding Ryoga that this boy too had been in love with Akane once upon a time, "they hurt them all" Gos said, swallowing hard as he remembered how the girls had looked when he had first found them in the back of this very wagon.

O

O

O

It was almost nightfall by the time that Nabiki and Ranma returned, the former on a horse that had to be one of their own and the second driving their missing wagon, complete with the gear they had had, plus more, plus a trail of horses behind.

Ukyo, who had been tending to the campfire-kitchen, immediately stood and stepped towards them. She was dressed in men's clothes once more, ones whose bloodstained shirt clearly indicated the origin of, and in her hand suddenly was a bared blade.

Gos, for his part, had been sat pouring over a book again, desperately trying to relearn anything that might have given them some sort of mystical fighting strength too, and the relief on his face was almost palpable as he saw the other pair return. He immediately called to Ryoga who in turn stood up from where he had been guarding the one tent they had put up and it's single occupant.

"Well?" he asked not stepping any further from the tent than he had to.

Ranma didn't immediately reply, instead he hauled up his horse and reached his good arm down to a baize sack hanging on his saddle horn. Even in the gloom Ryoga and the others could see the dark stain on the bag, one that neatly matched the stains on the bandage that covered Ranma's right hand and left eye.

He threw the bag to Ryoga who duly looked inside before passing it to Ukyo.

"He'll not bother anyone again" Ranma swore, "none of them will" he added, his tone dark and dreadful, leaving none in any doubt as to what exactly he and Nabiki had done when they had found Ohlmin and his men.

"Thank you" Ukyo offered, her accented voice a little choked and her heart hard as she looked down on the cold dead face of the man that had led her tormentors.

"Thank Nabiki" Ranma replied, his voice still stone hard as he debated getting off the horse. Every last bit of him still ached, was still feeling like it was being fed through a mincing machine, and putting his part healed tendons back to the floor would only make it worse, and risk damaging them again.

Which in turn would mean less of the recovered draughts for the others.

Ukyo turned to the silent form on the flatbed. She had only heard Nabiki say two words since it happened, and those only to insist that she went with Ranma as he had dragged himself onto a horse. He had of course objected, but only once, the look in the Ice Queen's eyes stopping any further debate dead.

"I shot him" Nabiki supplied "Through his fetid guts" she elaborated, her voice coming through set teeth in a hard lined jaw. "He screamed a lot before Ranma cut his head off" she added, making no attempt to hide the satisfaction in that.

In fact she had shot three of the slavers, taking their lives with a calm precision that belied how new killing was to her, and nor had she batted an eyelid as Ranma had killed the others or taken a the stolen sword to Ohlmin's neck. She had been sick afterwards but Ranma wasn't about to say that, and she sure as hell wasn't either.

On the other hand she did have one thing she did need to say and as soon as she had locked the brake on she was stepping down from the wagon and heading over to Ryoga.

To his surprise the middle Tendo then wrapped him into a hug and squeezed him with enough force that even he felt it. "Thank you" she whispered, "I Owe you" she promised, her voice softening to reveal the depth of the gratitude in her heart.

"And you" she added towards Gos, who she hadn't forgotten had been the one who had actually got them out of there, who had cut her free. Tendo Nabiki was not a woman used to being indebted to people but for the life of her she could think of no measure of thanks big enough for these two men who had defied their own hurts to save her from the hell she had been thrown into.

Or for Ranma whose every bandage was a visible reminder of the price he had been willing to pay to buy the time that the other two had needed to come around. There were however all sorts of other issues there too and she wasn't ready quite to deal with that.

Ukyo, feeling the gravity of the occasion, strode across the grass and wrapped Nabiki into a hug of her own, one that immediately had the ice Queen stiffening in instinctual response before she could dream of relaxing into the silently needed comfort.

Ranma, his face still dark and set, turned his horse about and headed off "Going to check the area" he asserted, the steel in his voice hiding none of the pain from any that knew him.

"You're going to have to talk to him" Ukyo whispered to the woman she was holding.

"I know" Nabiki replied, her voice tinged with pain and uncertainty, "I just don't know what to say" she said, slowly extracting herself from the embrace.

"Food's nearly ready" Ukyo offered in a clear attempt to cover that moment, and give everyone an escape to simpler things. One they readily accepted as one by one they volunteered to do things to help.

Anything to keep busy and keep their demons at bay.


	13. Long night, long days

It was a long night, a very long night, Gosunki one of the very few who got more than a few winks of sleep throughout it's dark hours. Even then he might have demurred had not his body pulled rank and commanded his eyes shut.

Of the others Akane was probably the next closest, spending most of the night, like she had spent most of the day before, curled up into a near catatonic ball of pain and completely oblivious to the world around her as she silently wept in the seclusion of the tent they had made for her.

Ryoga had tried to comfort her of course, had tried every method he knew, from soothing words to his cursed form, but the merest hint of a presence near her had sent her back into another fit of screaming. Whether that presence was male, female or porcine seemed to make no difference at all, the world was apparently a too terrible place to be and she had retreated as far from it as she could.

So they had used what Healing stuff they had left to try and make her better and Ryoga had stood as near a guard as he could, all night long.

Not that Ranma had been much different, his own demons driving him to the point where even being still seemed to take more effort than he had left in his battered form. It didn't take a genius to see the guilt on his face, in his every motion, or to guess as to what he was feeling guilty about, but not one of the group could find any words to make it better.

In the end Nabiki had snapped at him, demanding he 'stay damn still!' and he had complied, sitting almost instantly into a lotus squat and starting to meditate again.

Nabiki had needed none of Ukyo's extrasensory skill to guess that he was still doing anything but resting and was instead looking for some way to use his Ki to detect what he was no longer allowed to keep physically searching for.

"You killed them all" Ukyo had said, receiving an affirmative nod from her companion by the fire, "then I doubt there's another living soul in fifty miles" she had asserted, and once more Nabiki could only nod in reply.

Mostly because even if she too thought the effort was pointless, was almost certain that tonight would be completely undisturbed from without, she appreciated the watch anyway. The night was very dark tonight, even with the stars.

She and Ukyo had sat up basically all night at the fire, not really talking more than was absolutely necessary, but sharing that silence in as supportive a way as ever a silence could be. They hadn't ever exactly been good friends but that night they shared something that neither would have been without, considering the circumstances.

By the time dawn arrived the camp was already mostly packed, action being used as another balm for the hurts that lingered inside each one of them. All that remained in the otherwise forested glade was the one tent that they had not dared move, the one with Akane sleeping in it.

They all knew that it had to be done, all knew what would happen when they did, but all had a reason not to be the one to do it. With everyone basically volunteering silently to do their part this part had naturally been left to last. Even the horses had been saddled first.

Which had brought them to the debate of the extra wagon, the one **that** had all happened in. Technically they didn't need it anymore, they had been talking about ditching some of their stuff anyway, and with the supplies they had just stolen off the slavers that was all a lot easier, not least of which because the slaver's gear had been of a more expensive variety than their own.

Technically speaking the carriage that Gos had stolen was a good one, well sprung and nicely designed. But there wasn't one of them that could honestly claim it was a welcome sight, and one or two of them that secretly believed it would haunt them for a fair time to come yet.

So they had decided it had to go, which had left the problem of how. On the flat lands this side of the hills the chances of a smoke plume that large not being seen were remote and Ukyo had been in the middle of, reluctantly, suggesting that they just leave it when Gos had come up with the solution.

"I can make it burn without smoke" he had announced, and all eyes had turned on him. "I learnt it to mask our fire yesterday" he explained, suddenly acutely self conscious, and ashamed of the fear that had prompted the learning.

"That was a good idea" Nabiki had offered and the others had joined in, "Are you sure it will work?" She asked, forcing herself to be responsible one again no matter how much she wanted to hide away like her sister.

Gos had nodded and that had been that, Ranma had wordlessly set to making sure that not a trace of the thing would survive the fire and that it wouldn't spread to the trees around and thus negate all their efforts.

That had been an hour ago and now little at all remained of the scene of those horrible acts, but still nobody had talked about getting on the move, and every eye was still avoiding the last tent.

"Ill do it" Ranma said at last, as most had quietly expected him to, after all, rightly or wrongly, it had been his job for as long as most of them had known him. As the most physically injured of them all there was rather a risk in it but then once again he wasn't thinking about that, just about looking after the others.

Nabiki could have kissed him, not only for the thoughtfulness, but for sparing her the job. She knew how fragile she was today, how much more like the glass queen she was feeling than the Ice queen, but she also knew that she was the only other person who was likely to have taken the responsibility. Which made Ukyo's interjection all the more odd.

"No sugar" she insisted, "last thing she needs right now is a man helping her" the chef asserted, "I am the only one who's likely to be able to take the hits and not cause more" she said, revealing her own logic and her own determination.

"But" Ranma objected.

"You don't even like her" Ryoga finished, his own feeling of guilt for not volunteering written all over his face.

"That was two days ago sugar" Ukyo supplied, and once more that was that, nobody needed to ask what had changed, the lingering smoke was there to remind them.

In the end it hadn't been as bad as that, Akane had screamed and she had lashed out, she had punched and she had kicked but she had quickly worn herself out and collapsed back into a boneless heap that the chef had simply lifted and lugged onto the flatbed so they could finally move again.

Midday saw them once more back at the edge of the waste and once more trekking out over it's barren, sun beaten expanse. Ranma and Ryoga, both individual reasons, had both proven rather knowledgeable about the necessities for crossing a desert and as a result the lot of them were doing a fair impression of faceless mummy's in the train that began to slowly care it's way across the ground.

"If anyone is following us" Ukyo observed, looking back at the tracks their wagon was leaving in the flat earth, "then we might as well leave directions" she said, her tone far from approving, and just hinting at the worry that lingered at the edges of her consciousness. She might be far from a delicate princess, having spent a decade battling the sea, but recent events had affected her a good deal more than she was trying to make out.

"Uh?" Gos replied, looking up from the book he had his nose buried in and around the landscape, apparently noticing for the first time that they had left the greener lands behind. In fact he had barely seen a word since they had set off, his mind far more occupied with the quiet tension that still pervaded the little group; the book was just his version of a defensive wall.

"Never mind" Ukyo offered in return, with a shake of her head, her tone still harsher than was really necessary but then it didn't take a genius to see how defensive that was either.

Gos just shook his head and went back to his book, rusting the doubty drays to follow on after the other horses and leave him to his ruminations. Intellectually he knew that the girls were all hurting, indeed he more than most of them could empathise with some of the darker thoughts of impotent helplessness they were fighting just now. But he couldn't bring himself to say much, talking had never exactly been his strongpoint and everything he had thought of to say had just sounded trite and hollow.

"If you can't say anything good" he muttered to himself "then your mouth's better used for chewing" he quoted, reaching into his pocket for another of their recently acquired strips of good jerky.

It was a long way from the foods of the land of his birth but he wasn't about to complain, at least it stopped him grinding his teeth.

Meanwhile Ukyo had found another subject to bristle at, pulling alongside Nabiki she had nodded at the distant figure of Ranma, riding up ahead of the column ostensibly to 'scout the way.' "So much for the new Ranma" Ukyo offered, the barb evident in her voice. Her mood had been dipping since the morning and she knew it, talking was about the only thing she could think of to do to keep from thinking, and even though she knew that every word coming from her mouth was an attack she really wasn't caring all that much, it was better than being alone with her thoughts.

"Huh?" Nabiki replied, obviously near as distracted as Gos had been, and only just now looking up from the book she had been reading as her mare had plodded along in the wake of Ryoga's. "New Ranma?" she asked, blinking a little at the sunlight.

Like the others she was swaddled almost head to foot in wrappings to preserve that precious layer of moisture near her skin, unlike the others she had also added a crafted sun visor to diminish the reflected glare of the sun off the pages of her own magical book.

"Caring, sharing and thoughtful" Ukyo sneered, completely unaware of how much she was sounding like Akane had before the 'events.'

It took Nabiki a few more moments to catch up then her expression, such as it was darkened considerably. She knew exactly what Ukyo was doing, had even studied briefly some of the stages that they were likely to go through enough to identify the 'anger' stage that Ukyo was now in, but she also knew how dangerous that could be if the cycle wasn't corrected.

"Because he's not here to comfort us?" Nabiki asked, her tone a frosty warning. The truth was she had actually asked herself the same question this morning, had wondered very briefly if Ranma was treating her like so many other Japanese might have if they were made aware of her 'fallen' status. The difference was that Nabiki had almost immediately buried that thought.

"Treating us like we're the ones who failed" Ukyo replied, unmeant venom dripping from her words. She was hurting and looking for someone to blame, now that Ohlmin and his crew weren't breathing apparently part of her was shifting onto Ranma.

"Because he should have tried harder to save us?" Nabiki offered, her tone still frosty, "because he always has before?" she added, and Ukyo should have taken the warning, Nabiki might be coping remarkably well but there was little she could do to completely quench that simmering anger inside herself.

"Yes" Ukyo all but spat, internally hating herself for the unworthy thought. As a youth she had been content to join the others in expecting miracles form the center of their little circle, but she had thought herself beyond that.

"You saw what he went through" Nabiki offered, her tone less cold but still steely hard, "They beat on him for hours" she insisted, a hint of the horror and revulsion she had felt then lingering in her voice, "they loaded him down with enough restraining magic to pollute the air about him and still he found ways to fight them" she asserted, remembering the awe on the face of the slaver mage as Ranma had once again shrugged off the spells to stand and bait his tormentors. She didn't add that the rest of them Ukyo and Akane included hadn't managed to fight back nearly as effectively, even under a lot less restraint, that would have been going too far.

"He even decked Ohlmin once" Nabiki added, remembering the shock on the group's face as the pigtailed warrior had stood on trembling limbs and managed to get within reach of Ohlmin despite the magically induced weight of elephants bearing down on him.

"And you know why" Nabiki added, remembering the one moment of fear she had seen on Ranma's face as he had seen the girls being held at bladepoint, separated up so that there was no way even he could reach them all before the first knife did it's fatal work. Ohlmin had told the bound martial artist what he had planned for the girls and that had been what had cued Ranma's plan.

"Ohlmin told him that he was going to make Ranma beg before…" Nabiki said, not quite strong enough herself to finish the line, "So Ranma didn't beg" she asserted, remembering screaming herself that he should, should do anything at all he could to stop them hurting "They beat his bloody eye out" Nabiki added, unable to stop the welling of her own anger, "and he spat at them"

"Pride" Ukyo retorted, even though she deep down didn't believe that, "Ranma Saotome doesn't lose" she sneered, feeling her guts twist in self-loathing for the low blow.

Nabiki paused "He lost then" Nabiki replied, "he only bought us a few hours, for the mere price of his pain, blood, hand and eyesight all he got was a few hours less of them raping us" Nabiki rebutted, her unseen mouth curling into a sneer of it's own. She could still remember the hot tears that had run down her face, the harsh rasp of her own screams as she had watched Ohlmin take that bar to the young man and beat it dripping red.

Ukyo's mouth opened to argue, to retort with more venom, but she couldn't find it, even hurting as she was she couldn't deny the supreme efforts or hideous cost that Ranma had paid to buy them a few hours less.

"I deserved that" she said instead, hanging her head as Nabiki's words tore the wind from the chef's sails.

"Yes he is avoiding us" Nabiki offered, her tone sliding to softer as she looked back towards the figure up ahead, "Yes he's finding it hard to look at us" she added, "because yes he does think he failed" the middle Tendo told her friend, "right now he's working himself to exhaustion" she insisted, "and all the while thinking up a thousand different ways he could have just bought a little more time, wishing that he had been able to give more and just maybe have saved us altogether"

Ukyo couldn't help but nod, knowing Ranma well enough to know that much at least was true, right now her former fiancé would be, far from looking down on the girls, hating himself for failing them, the facts completely irrelevant to a man who had always carried the burden of others on his shoulders.

"Yesterday he killed people" Nabiki continued, "broke all sort of promises he had made on his honour, to avenge us" she said, "I doubt his pain even occurred to him as he took those slavers apart" Indeed the truth was even though she had been there to help Ranma had done the vast majority of the work himself, a furious angel of death wreaking terrible retribution onto the people that had wronged those he cared about.

Nabiki hadn't been at Phoenix mountain, and hadn't really ever seen Ranma at his best, but that night she had seen him at his worst, the terrible, lethal force of destruction that only his honour prevented him from becoming full time. It had scared her almost as much as it had secretly comforted her.

For the girls Ranma had forgotten his own honour, his own pride and done what he felt needed to be done, never even thinking of the cost to himself as he had made good on his promise to make sure that they never needed to be afraid of Ohlmin and his rapist friends ever again, that nobody would need to be.

"He'll be feeling like shit" Ukyo offered aloud, summing it up in her own way and receiving a nod in reply.

"Yup" Nabiki agreed, "and for the life of me I don't know a single word to say that's going to come close to making him forget the sound of Akane's screams."

Up ahead Ryoga had heard most of the conversation, his initial reaction had been to agree with Ukyo, to once more seek the comforting lie and blame Ranma for it all, btu along with the chef he had been forced to put that aside. The truth was he would right now trade all he had to have been the one taking those hits but he couldn't honestly say he would have been able to stand up as well as Ranma, breaking point or not. That had been an effort not of physique but of sheer will and Ryoga didn't delude himself any more that he came that close to the pig tailed warrior in that regard.

As the girls fell silent Ryoga made himself another quiet promise, not only would he do all he could to help the girls, all of them, but he would find a way to help Ranma, his former enemy and the best of them all.


	14. Wasteland

The waste itself was not hard going, the smooth packed and parched earth of the great blast plain about as easy on the trekers as it ever could be. However the ground was never going to be the problem, rather it was the air.

At the height of the day the heat was literally stifling, every breath made to feel like it was forced through against that relentless heat and a painful reminder of how closely they were rationing their water.

The else-world travellers had quickly taken to avoiding the head of the noon hours under strung tarpaulins and the shade of the wagons but even that was precious little against the rebounding ripples of warmth.

"Two more days," Nabiki repeated for what had to be the hundredth time, her countdown had become her little mantra against the heat, her way of marking the passing of time as they forged their way across the heat of the man made desert. The figures of course were little more than a best guess, based on estimated travel and her personal faith in Ranma's ability to keep them on the straight path.

Of course that faith wasn't exactly optional, even a slight deviation as they had crossed the featureless landscape could yet see them adding days to their trek, days that their water wouldn't hold out for.

Already they had had to take the more practical decision to slaughter some fo the animals they had brought with them and 'recycle' one of the wagons they had been drawing into firewood. They hadn't needed it to draw their water anymore, having drunk the largest part of it, and sheer practicality said that to water animals they didn't need wasn't conducive to longer life.

Everyone had been waiting for Akane to protest, to demand and decry until the animals were instead released for a slow death out of sight. But she hadn't and the silence had been somehow worse than the tantrum they had expected, another reminder of the tragedy that had befallen the party.

Nobody was feeling that worse than Ryoga, for whom the enforced distance between himself and the woman he had pursued for so very long was an almost physically painful thing. He dared not so much as let her see him lest the screaming start again and her silence was little better.

For as long as the two of them had been together he had been used to her temper and her tantrums, they had been the one constant of his otherwise directionless existence. Without them he felt literally lost again.

So he had filled his days with other things, with practice and with useful little bits of campcraft. While they had moved he had been desperately seeking some new mental technique to follow the passage of terrain, so far it hadn't worked but he had to believe he was closer for the effort.

If nothing else it kept his mind occupied and not thinking about the silence that seemed to have wrapped around them like a shroud. When they travelled such silence seemed natural enough, somehow fitting considering the terrain they moved through, but when they stopped they had little choice but to return to the here and now.

All of which meant the midday stops were the hardest times for him, times when he couldn't avoid looking at the wagon that drew Akane along, time when he had to talk to the others and pretend that he wasn't noticing the way they avoided certain subjects, or the painful pauses when the conversation strayed too close.

He was not expecting today to be any different and, as the girls almost automaton-like began stringing the tarps, he busied himself helping the animals to get comfortable too. Ukyo had once quipped that he should be better able than most to get on with the mules, something about similar mentalities but they all knew now that the only assistance they really needed was the exhaustion that was folding around the beasts of burden as surely as the silence around their owners.

"We could give them an extra ration of water?" Ryoga suggested as Ranma moved to join him in releasing the beasts from their traces and saddles. The short rations didn't only mean thirst for that animals, it meant hunger too, it took a great deal of water for them to digest their fodder so the creatures were operating on the minimum of that too.

"We could" Ranma agreed but his tone said there was a counter argument coming, not turning to meet Ryoga's eyes. That in itself was pretty surreal for Ryoga, Ranma avoiding an argument, being polite. "But we'd be banking on finding water soon the other side" he explained, making it a choice of sorts.

Basically what it came down to was that the animals would recover fast enough if they found a decent supply of water around Bremon, but they themselves wouldn't make it if they used up all their water before they found a fresh supply.

Once again hard practicalities were being forced ahead of softer principles. Which in itself was a new thing for a good few of the group for whom softer living and civilised morality had come as a birthright.

That it was happening now was perhaps just another example of just how vulnerable some of them were feeling in this dark and uncivilised land.

"Never mind then" Ryoga replied, taking the practical path and resigning to starving the poor animals some more.

For a short while that same silence returned, broken only by the subdued noises of the folks as they went about the now routine process of setting noonday camp. Then suddenly, like a bolt from the blue sky above, it was broken.

"No!" Ranma insisted, his voice quiet but iron hard, hard enough that it carried even to where the girls were setting their pegs in. Suddenly everyone was looking at him, tense as hell for an explosion of some sort.

"No!" he repeated, setting his tool down and heading for the water butts, his voice louder now and just as hard. "It does matter!" he insisted "We should mind!" he asserted, collecting a feed sacking bucket and dipping it, "some things are right and some things are wrong" he asserted, finishing the preparations and giving the first animal that precious, long sought after drink.

"Those who can make a difference should, practicality be damned" he said, "martial artist or not" he finished, reaching for the next bag. Only to be interrupted as Ryoga reached out and took the bag from him.

"They should" the fanged man agreed with an adamant nod.

"And what about the costs?" Asked another voice, "who pays for these principles" Gosunki asked, his tone steady and even, interrogative rather than angry. Nobody there needed reminded what the so called principles and honour or the wrecking crew had cost him on the other side. Here he might be walking among them, he'd never manage that at home.

Beside him Nabiki stood too, her expression very focused indeed on this sudden turn in the 'conversation.' She too had been part of that dynamic, had seen the damage that 'honour' pacts had caused. She didn't need reminding how trapped Ranma had been, she had used his honour for that enough times herself. Honour had brought all of them there, and bound them together right till the end. Without heart held principles Nerima couldn't have happened, it couldn't have been the relatively innocent game it had been for so much of it's time.

But they were now a long way from Nerima, in every sense of the word.

"We all do" Ranma replied, turning to meet her eyes for what was about the first time since the 'incident' "but the world is a better place for it" he added, his voice sure and relentless.

"Easy for you to say" Ukyo retorted, standing up to join Nabiki looking at the men. This wasn't about animals anymore, if it ever really had been. It was about something a great deal more important.

"Easy isn't the point" Ranma replied, his tone not raising to match hers, he wasn't about to get into that argument. But he did less than consciously reach up and scratch at the bandage now covering one side of his face, and did use a badly damaged hand to do it.

Those who knew about such things would know just how much pain those injuries must still be giving him, every day. But those around him had honestly more or less stopped thinking about it. It was all too easy to do when Ranma himself made no mention of the pain or the loss.

"The easy road only goes downhill" Ryoga said, suddenly breaking in himself. That had taken a bit of doing too, to side with Ranma, to stay calm himself and not rise to this argument as his every conditioning had wanted to do.

Ranma, every bit as surprised as Ukyo at the support, looked over to his friend and nodded before looking back to the girls where they stood. "Some things are important enough that you worry about the consequences afterwards" he avowed.

"Rubbish" Nabiki offered, without venom, "you always worry about the consequences" she insisted, but at the same time she was closing the gap and reaching for a feedbag herself. "You just don't have to let them stop you" she said, filling the bag for another animal.

All her life she had been very good at weighing things, at profit-cost analysis, benefits against risks. She had supported her family on it and put herself through college on it. But deep down she was also her father's daughter, and her principles were one thing she had never sold.

Squeezed a little, bent from time to time, but never sold.

"A martial artist protects those weaker than himself" Ukyo quoted, her eyes narrowing. Inside she could feel that same bitterness welling up again, looking for it's target and she tried to fight it once more but the words came out anyway, "what about Olhmin?" she asked, the words stopping everything like the crack of a whip.

"Mousse and Shampoo" she added, her eyes glaring right at Ranma as she named some of the lives he had taken. "Martial artists don't kill" she said, twisting the metaphorical knife. If there was one thing Ranma had never been it was eloquent, from the moment they had met him he had been almost completely unable to express anything deeper than they could see. And this time the platitudes his father had instilled weren't going to cut it.

The rest looked back in shocked silence, stunned that she would say those words to him of all folks. Only Ranma's face didn't change, only his expression remained even. After all this was old news to him.

"Sometimes" he offered, quietly, "our own principles are less important than bigger ones," he said, "Sometimes promises we make to ourselves are more wrong than promises we should have made to others."

"Olhmin deserved to die" Ryoga agreed, having similarly struggled with this same problem, "not just for what he had done" he added, "but to stop him from doing it again"

"And again" Nabiki agreed, her own opinion on Olhmin's end more than apparent from the hard edged tone in her voice. Ranma held up a hand to stop them, gathering himself again.

He had always known he would be called to account sooner ort later, he just hadn't expected it from Ukyo, a girl whose early life's bread and water had been revenge "Every time" he said, "we take a life" he asserted, "we are lessened." the words were clearly not all his own, had clearly been read somewhere, but thy were also coming from his heart, "even if the taking is justified" he added.

"But far better that way" he said, "than we stand aside and let another evil triumph or become an evil ourselves"

"Personal isn't always the same as important" he finished, his words crystal clear in the still air.

And Ukyo couldn't argue, nor could anyone else.

Instead the Chef and the others slowly nodded and went back to doing what they knew was right, feeding the animals whose lives depended on them, and leaving their own worry for another time.

"You've changed a lot Ranchan" Ukyo whispered as she found herself working next to the pig-tailed martial artist. He nodded a sad reply through pursed lips, the prices of those changes weren't exactly ones he would have chosen to pay.

The silence came back afterwards, but somehow it wasn't as oppressive, something had changed and even the heat didn't seem quite so awful.

Nabiki knew what it was, could see it quietly sneaking into the every motion of her fellow travellers, it was the re-dawning of hope, of a belief in a brighter world where right and wrong mattered and where the being the good guys was important.

She just hoped they wouldn't live to regret it.


	15. Out of the Waste

Throughout those two days the mountain of Bremon seemed to be resolved not to get any closer at all. But at least it was now visible, a lone, snow topped peak jutting out from the ground as if to echo one of the great teeth set into the maw of the creature that they knew lay beneath it.

Even at this distance, and through the heat haze sent up by the featureless plain they were hoping to leave at any moment, they could make out a hint of the size of the thing, it's green slopes clearly home to a forest that dwarfed the well tended things they were used to back in Japan.

Had any of them cared to think things out, to compare what they were seeing with the knowledges their geography teachers had tried so hard to impart into them then perhaps they might have questioned how such a mountain came to be, how it was that there was this lone peak jutting so uniquely out of the scenery. But even with the monotony of travel across the waste of Elrood their minds apparently still had better things to worry about than plate tectonics or the lack of them.

On the other hand they did have plenty of enough time to worry about things like the water supply, about their dwindling supplies of cured meat and the complete lack of improvement of their youngest companion.

Time was supposed to heal all wounds, but apparently it was going to take a great deal more than that to get Akane back among them, let alone back into the wider community.

Nabiki, who of all of them was most aware of the precedents, had forced herself to stop thinking about such things. Her friends in true psychiatry might swear by electro shock therapy and Ranma might be a living advertisement for mental conditioning but any way she looked at it the prospects for her youngest sister were getting grimmer every day she failed to snap out of her fugue.

"Pity there are no healing draughts for the mind" she muttered as she turned her head once again away from where her sister lay under the cover of the wagon that Nabiki was herself driving.

"Huh?" Gos offered from the seat next to her, hearing her for the first time in a long while and even then only possibly because he happened to be turning the pages he was reading when Nabiki spoke.

Of all of them he was the only one who seemed to be coming out of this well, the complete opposite of Ranma and Akane, he had effectively been cured of a maiming by coming here. More than that he had been granted his fondest wishes in terms of those dreams of magic now made a reality.

He had lost good friends, had suffered violence and the threats of violence but Gos was still quietly on top of the world.

"You're not coming back with us are you" Nabiki offered, the thought having been bouncing around her head for quite a while. For the rest of them more or less everything they had done since the moment they arrived had been part of a process trying to get them home, but there was simply no way Nabiki could see Gos giving up what he had here to go back to being a second rate hack in a wheelchair.

The old Gos might have stammered, might have prevaricated and tried to avoid what was basically an accusation, but that was before he had discovered true magic, before he had finally found a meaning to himself. Instead he met Nabiki's gaze with an only slightly apologetic one of his own.

"No Nabiki," he said, "I'm not" he offered, carefully closing his book because he knew this conversation wasn't one that he could afford to mess up. "I'll see you all to the gate" he said, "I owe you that much" he offered, "but after that…." He let the sentence trail off, what he did after that wouldn't be relevant to them, their would be an entire universe between them.

"Owe us?" Nabiki offered, carefully not agreeing or disagreeing. At the end of the day she more or less knew where he was coming from, could even agree on some of the points but she needed to hear him say it anyway, she was dead sure that Ukyo wouldn't let that one lie nearly so easily.

"It's my fault we're here" Gos replied, his new confidence faltering a little to reveal a more familiar touch of the Gos that Nabiki had grown up with. After all it was one thing to feel the guilt for bringing the rest of them here, it was another thing to publicly accept that and dare the consequences.

Life long vendetta's had started for less.

"Go on" Nabiki prodded, less than particularly kindly. She in fact didn't wholly agree with the idea that their presence was all the young mage's fault, they had after all all been given a choice before they came, all been given a chance to back out; and there was clearly more to this trip than Gos had expected.

"Deighton couldn't have gotten you here without my help" Gos added, cutting once more to the chase. "Even Ranma wouldn't have agreed to help him the way you agreed to help me"

"True" Nabiki replied, still apparently reserving judgement. In truth she had taken the time to think these things through some time ago, had actually already been over the blame game more than once, just to check that her own reasonings weren't squewed.

"Which means that none of you would have ever been here to be hurt" Gos explained, forced to fill the silence that Nabiki was leaving for him, "not you, not Ukyo, Ranma or Akane, and not" he paused for a moment, his hands tightening almost imperceptibly on the bindings of his precious book, "not Natsu-chan" he said and Nabiki was reminded once more just how much more there might have been to that story.

Akane might be broken inside but Konatsu, the best 'friend' that Gos ever really had, didn't even have her prospects. All it had taken was that one presumably enchanted bolt, a hefty portion of bad luck and a string of unfavourable coincidences and Konatsu the female-impersonator-ninja had paid the ultimate price.

Surreptitiously Ukyo had gotten closer, her mare seeming to appear next to the seat that Nabiki and Gos were sharing, her face was already a thundercloud and one look at her could instantly tell any onlooker that was only the beginning.

"I loved him you know" Gos said, suddenly stealing the wind from Ukyo's storm, "not in the way that Ryoga and.." he paused as if unwilling to say the name this time, "not like that" he said, more resolutely. "It wasn't really an option for me back there" he said, revealing more about how crippled he had felt than he really intended.

Japan, for all her trappings of civilisation, was not a country that treated her invalids very well. Too much of their mindset still lingered in the Shinto beliefs of physical form being a result of internal worth, too many people still secretly held that to be crippled a man had to have done something to deserve such a fate. The ugly and the infirm, even in the twenty-first century, were still commonly treated not only like they had asked for their afflictions but as if their physical shortcomings were merely part of a distasteful whole.

Gos, with his history in Japanese mysticism, had clearly not been able to rid himself of those ideas any more than the society had. It was one thing to be told you were being punished for something you had no knowledge of, it was another to actually believe it yourself.

"But I would have died for him" Gos added, apparently sincerely, reminding both girls just how passionately this man could feel about things. But then how could you repay the first person to argue with that internal voice, the first one to teach you that you were worth something even in a chair.

"Pity you didn't" offered Ukyo in a harsh whisper that they all knew she didn't really mean, was part of that same simmering anger at the world.

Gos flinched anyway, and was about to retreat back into his book when Nabiki reached out and squeezed his shoulder reassuringly. "Be careful" was all she added, tacitly agreeing not to stand in his way if he decided to leave them at the Gate.

When it finally caem the end of the Waste came a little earlier than they had planned, that same eerily perfect border of desert-to-foliage demarking the end of the blasted plain and the renewal of the greener lands that surrounded it.

That wasn't to say it was all going to be plain sailing from there though, the lands here weren't exactly prime real estate; instead they were low scrub and grassy foothill, far far from ideal for either the cart or the replenishment of already dwindled supplies.

Additionally, with the renewal of living ground-growth, there came the other signs of the restoration of natural laws, including birdsong, animal sign and, perhaps most of all, including the rain. Where the small party had been steadily forging their way through the Waste's baking heat now they suddenly found themselves subject to chilling downpour and were almost immediately drenched through.

The first touches of it had been almost welcome, a refreshing caress after the desert's heat, an offered drink of water that hadn't spent so many tendays heating in a barrel. But that was now hours ago and still the rain was coming down.

"Who was worrying about water supplies again?" offered Ukyo, less than kindly. Her mood, her aggressiveness had improved a little as time had gone by, the keen observer able to spot times when she had literally bitten her tongue to stop the hurtful words. But apparently the cool water trickling down her neck was doing very little to improve her mood.

Ranma's reply was somewhat less than polite, or even close to ladylike, the rain having taken it's rather predictable effect on his, now her physique and mood alike. His scouting job had become all the more onerous in the meantime thanks not only to the rain and mud but also to the small matter of Ryoga being completely unable to help in any real way.

Instead the man-turned-pig was now sat on the flatbed seat of their one remaining wagon, next to the somewhat less than amused Gosunki who had been, by virtue of the rain coming down, denied his fondest pastime of reading.

For a small time he had managed to make do with an enchantment that had kept the rain away but that simply hadn't been able to last, not with the water conspiring to attack him from everywhere it could think of, from the hooves the draught animals or of passing horses, drips from trees, rebounding spray from the wagon and drips from his own head.

So now he rode in the same sodden temper that the others apparently shared.

After the conversation in the Waste not for a moment did anyone truly believe that Gos was going to go through with them, go back to his wheelchair and his crippled body, give up the magic and the ability to walk for the simple trappings of civilisation.

Here his teeth might rot out of his head, his life expectancy might be dramatically shortened by disease, misadventure and more, but at least he could go to the toilet without help, at least he could have a drink without having to worry about where he was going to be when it ran through his system. Here he was a mage and a whole man, at home he would never be either.

But as the Mountain loomed closer he was being forced to think of all the things he was giving up, the luxuries, the safeties and sureties, the few friends he did have back there and the solid friends he had here; this world had already killed Konatsu, broken had hurt almost everyone else that had accompanied him here. That had accompanied him here at his request.

He might not be showing it in quite the same way as the more physical members of the group but Gos was feeling the guilt of all of that with every passing mile, every time that people avoided mentioning Konatsu, or avoided mentioning what had brought them here, Gos felt it and knew that that feeling was never going to go away.

Even getting these people home wasn't going to make it right, he doubted anything could ever do that now.

In the depressing gloom of the rain his thoughts were turning ever more towards depression

"Bugger it!" announced Nabiki, her voice somewhere between frustrated and determined as she hauled her horse up short. She really hadn't been agreeing well with that animal anyway and it's sudden need to drink from every puddle they passed wasn't helping. Taking to a steed hadn't in fact been her first choice anyway, it had simply been the only real choice left to them as long as they needed all their bases covered.

The sudden stop forced Gos to haul on his reins and the exclamation brought Ranma back in a shot, a look of concern on is face and his good hand hovering near the sword once more ensconced at his-her hip.

Suddenly everyone was looking back towards Nabiki, their faces a range of confusion and query, silently demanding some explanation for the outburst, if only to relieve the monotony of the rain.

"One more damn day isn't going to make a difference" she insisted, "and this rain can't possibly keep up" she said, sounding perhaps a little hopeful at the end.

"So?" Ukyo replied, her voice cutting even against the steady staccato of the rain on the vegetation around them.

"So we bloody well stop" Nabiki insisted, swinging from the saddle to land on the floor with a wet 'splat', "rig some tarps and stop slogging through the damn stuff" Nabiki said. "Here is as good a place as any" she insisted, waving a hand out at the rain shrouded scrubland they were moving through, "We make camp, get dry, get a warm meal and a damn rest!"

Ukyo opened her mouth to say something contrary but didn't manage, the idea of warm and dry was just too appealing, even for her bitterness. So instead she just grunted and turned to look at the person they knew was going to make the final decision, Ranma.

Whether he liked it or not he was their leader in this, the most experienced traveller of them who wasn't bound to get them lost and might actually appreciate how rough it was on people without stone hard skin. He had been the one time and time again to raise the argument that nobody else had thought of, to offer the benefits of his experience and settle things with a sensible solution. He was the only one who could gainsay Nabiki's apparent determination, and possibly the only one she was ever going to listen to at this point.

"Okay" he, currently she, said after a bare moment's more thought, "It'll give me some time to scout ahead" he added, obviously less at ease now their range of vision had dropped so much.

"Squuee squee!" Ryoga added from his seat next to Gos, bouncing up and down to try and say whatever it was his piggy mouth couldn't articulate.

"That too" Ranma offered with a nod, finding himself the new center of the odd looks, "Food" he supplied, with absolutely no explanation of how he had understood the squeal, "something other than the smoked mule" he explained and actually managed to earn a smile from Ukyo at that thought. Frankly the diet of smoked horse and near horse had been nearly as offensive to her as anything else they had endured on this sojourn, the prospect of anything else was more welcome than that first cool drink after the desert had been.

"Fish!" Ukyo cheered, instantly grasping one of the more likely ideas, with this weather a whole load of the other game would be hiding in their sets and burrows, but it would bring out the fish, were there any to come out.

"That needs a river" Nabiki offered as she plodded through the wet groundcover back towards the cart , "and the only one around here I know of is the one running down my neck" she countered, wishing again for even the cheapest and nastiest of plastic raincoats rather than the very-much-less-efficient treated canvas they were wearing.

"Where there is rain there is a river" Ukyo replied, sliding down herself and heading towards the now stationary cart, "and if anyone can find a river it's Ranma" she added, her mood apparently lifted enough to joke, albeit at another's expense.

"Rain we certainly have" Nabiki agreed, her mood already lightening enough not to get into an argument just from the prospect of a little warmth.

"I'll do my best" Ranma offered, looking about herself so as to memorise the location that they were setting up in before turning her horse back around and picking an apparently random direction to scout off in.


	16. Impluvium

Rather to the surprise of all of them the rain did in fact let up, a seemingly reluctant sun peeking through suddenly whiter clouds and finally dispersing the grey gloom of the morning and early after noon. Greyer clouds still loitered on the horizon but for the moment at least they seemed content to stay there.

In the expected-to-be-brief respite the girls and Gos took the time to set some things to rights, to repair the structure of their rather too hastily constructed covers and break out the gear to light a proper fire.

Once they got it warm enough they would be able to burn even the wetter wood around them but they needed to get the thing lit first and once again the folks found themselves wishing for some of the simple things that they took more or less for granted back home, simple things like matches.

In the end it was Gos who came to the rescue, summoning up some of his newfound magical ability to create the first flame which Ukyo then carefully sculpted into a proper fire. At Nabiki's insistence Gos then used some more of his power to repeat the trick he had used for the slaver wagon and eliminate the smoke from their fire, setting it to disperse rather than column up.

They might not think there was anyone after them but they had more than enough reasons not to take risks they didn't need to.

And if they needed any reminders then Akane amply supplied them, going into another fit of screaming when her sister tried to help her into some drier clothes. Not that Nabiki hadn't expected such a reaction, hadn't steeled herself for it, but being prepared did little to ameliorate the effects of the wails.

As Nabiki sat down her face was as pale as it had been the day they had arrived, before the long treks that this world had necessitated. And there was little anyone else could say to help out, there simply weren't any answers.

"It'll work out" Ukyo said anyway, her words sounding hollow even to her ears, and made all the more so when instead of being cheered up Nabiki just solemnly shook her head, she knew what Akane's chances were and even being optimistic for her sister didn't involve much hope right then.

"It has to" added another voice, the re-humanised Ryoga who had just reappeared, clothed again, from around the shelter. He might be a virtuoso of despair himself but there remained still that little touch of the naive youth about him, the one that genuinely believed that everything could work out I the end if they just tried hard enough.

For a moment it was just a question of which one of the two girls was going to bite his ehad off first, Gos was already flinching in anticipation. But then they were interrupted by another, more welcome, observation.

"Ranma's back" Ryoga said, "nearly" he added, trying to explain what he meant, while he reached for the bundle of clothes that he had been forced to discar when the water came down, "I felt him coming" he offered, simultaneously revealing that he had been practicing some of Ranma's tricks, and revealing perhaps a little of what the boys had chatted about more or less very night as they crossed the Waste.

"Then" Nabiki argued, watching the Lost boy through narrowing eyes, "would you care to tell me why you're getting your fighting gear together?" she asked, having ot missed what exactly it was that Ryoga had come into the lean to for.

Whatever Ryoga replied was lost on the wind, partly because he only mumbled it rather than said it and partly because Ukyo was interrupting with a low growl. Apparently she already had her own opinions about why exactly Ryoga might be doing what he was doing, and already had her response worked out.

"It's nothing like that!" Ryoga argued quickly, a grim premonition of spatula inflicted pain flashing through his mind, "I just felt his mood!" the lost boy offered, raising a few eyebrows at that idea.

"He was projecting" Ryoga allowed and was more than a little put out to see the girls relax a good deal more once he admitted that he hadn't actually suddenly developed empathic skills from nowhere.

In it's own way that would have been nearly as disconcerting as anything else that had happened here. One thing any of the crew would have put money on happily, even at Nabiki's odds, would have been Ryoga's ability to miss or misread the emotions of others completely, and that especially went for anything to do with Ranma's motivations.

"You were planning on sharing this when?" Nabiki asked, her voice far from soft as she began to work herself into readiness too. Deliberately she was letting Ryoga feel a taste of her anger, while she could understand his desire not to worry the girls, to protect them even from the thought of possible trouble, she really couldn't have him taking those decisions on his own. His head simply wasn't level enough.

"Um" Ryoga supplied, looking about in increasing desperation as the implications of what he had done started to filter in. Even as he did that feeling of impending spatuala-isation was returning.

"Jackass!" Ukyo began to growl, reaching for said implement. It had taken her quite a considerable portion of their trip through the waste to modify the weapon she had bought into the 'correct' shape for her art and right now she wasn't able to think of a single damn reason why 'pork-butt' shouldn't be the first one to 'test' it's efficacy.

Ryoga was quickly backing off, his every expression revealing the increasing desperation he was feeling as he failed to come up with any form of excuse that wasn't about to make things worse.

Nabiki let him stew for a while before slowly, resolutely imposing a hand between him and the avenging angel-come-chef. "Defence first," she insisted, her tone brooking no refusal even if it hadn't been the most sensible course, "punishment later" she added, just to underline the fact this wasn't over yet and Ryoga was far from off the hook.

A few minutes after that she had everyone organised; Gos hidden and ready with one of his more destructive techniques, Ukyo with a loaded crossbow and her sharpened spatula as backup, Ryoga already gripping his bandana substitutes and her own hands filled with the second crossbow, it's dark fletched bolt already set into the groove, it's darker arms pulled back under that lethal tension.

All they needed now was an enemy.

Instead what they got was Ranma and her horse. The pair of them emerged from behind the bushes some distance away and continued their seemingly slow advance, without any sign of particular haste or alarm.

For the second time in that matter of minutes the crew's eyes turned to Ryoga and a growl returned to Ukyo's lips, the idea of all this concern for nothing evidently also a beating offence, despite Ryoga's obvious earlier reluctance to reveal anything. It wasn't exactly fair but then the concept of an unfair universe wasn't exactly new to Ryoga either.

Fortunately for the oft-lost-boy Ranma's arrival forestalled any of the nastiness that might have otherwise come his way, not least of which because as the Pig-tailed martial artist did in fact arrive his expression was clearly one of deep focus and perhaps even concern rather than anything else.

"Ranma?" Nabiki asked, her hand still held up to still Ukyo's vengeance.

"Give me a moment" Ranma replied, hopping down from his saddle in another of those innate displays of grace that he thought so very little about. "I need to work out how to say this" he replied, demonstrating once more a few of the changes that had come over him since the heady days of Nerima.

It wasn't al that long ago that the idea of thinking before he opened his mouth would have been an almost alien concept to him, and indeed the fact he didn't think before talking had seemed an almost signature part of him

Needless to say Gos, Ukyo and Ryoga who had perhaps seen a good deal less of this new side of him than Nabiki had, were more than a little surprised to hear such words from their friend, and for the moment forgot the violence that had been impending in favour of listening to try and work out what exactly was so important that even Ranma realised he had to present it carefully.

"Well?" demanded Ukyo, her patience already thinner than normal.

"I found some folk up ahead" Ranma offered, walking over to the waterskin that hung from the wagon, more to buy some more thinking time than anything else.

As he took the drink Ranma was still trying to work out how to present what he had observed, and perhaps more than that still trying to work out what he felt about what he had seen.

In the end he came to the same conclusion he had been coming to a great deal recently, he couldn't work it out alone so he'd talk it through with someone he trusted.

"There are some people up ahead," he supplied, looking directly at Nabiki as he began to lay out what was bothering him. "They are slavers" he explained, his tone as even as he could keep it, "with a couple of wagons of people" he said, explaining how he had first guessed their identity. "They aren't in a good way" he supplied, his tone changing just a touch to imply how much of a euphemism that was.

Already Ukyo's knuckles were white on her weapon, her opinion of their next actions plainer than if she had just shouted it at the top of her voice. As far as she was concerned those simple facts should have been enough, and their response wasn't a cause for debate, slavers were slavers and they had forfeited their right to breathe when they had taken up their 'profession.'

But Nabiki wasn't anywhere near satisfied yet, there were still some big holes in this that didn't make much sense, like what these people were doing here. There was a chance that they too were on the exiles' trail, seeking the same reward that Ohlmin had bragged of, but in that case why were they burdening themselves with the other people; and if they weren't after the other-worldly fugitives then what were they doing out here, the area around Bremon wasn't exactly densely populated or even well roaded.

"They had been raiding into a place called Theranjani" Ranma offered.

"Therajani" Gos corrected, unconsciously demonstrating a little more of the confidence that this Side had granted him, back home there was no way he would have corrected Ranma, and certainly not without worrying about what would happen if he did. "It's a nation state East of here" he explained, "run by an Elven aristocracy" he supplied, without the defensive smugness that might once have accompanied such a statement of superior knowledge.

Ranma shrugged offhandedly to accept the correction and continued, unaware of how the relationships around him were being redefined, "they were chased this way by some troops" he added, "who they think they have lost" he said as Nabiki's slight nod prompted for more information on that part.

"Numbers?" Nabiki asked, her gaze still apparently focused on Ranma's but quietly taking in the others around her too. From the tension in the chef's frame it was easy to see that leaving these people alone wasn't going to be a popular decision, but the chef was handle-able, it was Ryoga she was more worried about, the quiet coming from him could only be the quiet before a storm.

"Eleven definite" Ranma asserted, "but there might be more inside one of the wagons" he supplied, "It was shielded" he said, nodding slightly towards Gos to indicate that he suspected it was a Mage's wagon. "No great skill" he continued, not needing to say how his professional's eye had ascertained that, "standard swordsmen types."

"Armed?" Nabiki asked, not missing that Ranma's definition of 'standard swordsmen' might have included Kuno Tatewaki and more than a few other very good combatants.

"Every one of them" Ranma agreed, crouching down to start drawing a map on the ground, "crossbows here and here" he supplied, pointing to where he had quickly set up some fallen wood as model wagons and indicating that the crossbowmen were hanging out on top of the same.

At that point Nabiki had to admit that the decision was made, she had asked the questions and now they were moving on to the planning stage, it was no longer about whether they would take the slavers on but how. Silently she thought back to see where the choices had been changed but it wasn't easy, which led her to wonder whether or not she would really have wanted them any other way than they were now.

Intellectually she prided herself on her ability to separate matters of import from her emotions, to make decisions based on cold, hard necessities rather than emotive response but she wasn't so much of a fool to think that she never broke that rule and deep down it wasn't hard to find the anger at their own experience with this type of people still bubbling.

Anger was not a good motive to kill for, which took her to the next problem, this wasn't the same as the other times they had been forced to fight, they weren't reacting to being attacked or doing this for personal protection, what her friends were now planning was the deliberate and wilful attack of other people with the explicit intent of taking their lives.

It wasn't exactly something that Nabiki had ever expected to see Ranma doing.

"No" Ranma was arguing, deflecting a part of the plan that someone else had suggested, "we keep Gos in reserve" he said, his voice insistent as ever she had heard it, "we can't afford to be without magical protections" he explained, revealing again just how good at these things he was. For all the alienness of their situation, all the strange new physical rules that they were up against Ranma had simply adapted, integrated those new parameters into his tactics and found a way to counter them.

The question was whether he was adapting to the taking of lives just as easily. If he was then Nabiki wasn't very sure she wanted to be around him anymore, just the idea of some dark-Ranma capable of ending lives with as little remorse as he showed at a dinner table was a frankly terrifying thought.

"We don't kill" Ranma suddenly said, as if he had read Nabiki's mind, "unless we have to" he corrected, pretending not to understand the growl of disapproval that was coming from Ukyo's throat. "Just because they are wrong does not mean we have to be" he said, his tone betraying a good deal of personal thinking time on that subject.

It was a big relief to more than one of them, Ryoga too had been more than a little worried about that aspect of things, for all his threats and all his cries against the world enough of the honour code he and Ranma shared still lingered in him to make the idea of deliberately seeking the death of people weaker than him more than distasteful.

"They won't like being captured" Nabiki interjected, finally crouching down to join the others, "and won't go easily" she added, her eyes narrowing as she deliberately reminded them of what that decision would mean. Dead men did not get back up and stab people in the back when they weren't watching.

"It doesn't matter" Ranma argued, the slight shake of his head spreading more droplets of water, "we're good enough" he insisted, his smile breaking through again along with that now quieter confidence.

"So" he continued, nodding to the others to focus them back on the plan as he was explaining it, "Ukyo will…."


	17. After the rain

"This was a daft idea" Nabiki breathed as quietly as she could manage. It wasn't that she was once more soaked to the skin and it wasn't that she seemed to have accumulated enough mud on her person to level out a baseball pitch, nor was it even the fact that she found herself crawling **towards** the badguys, but more that she was doing it alone and with only a one shot anachronism for protection.

It would have been a lot better if it hadn't been her fault.

The others had been divvying out roles for the attack, making sure that they had all their bases covered and busy setting their faces to grim when Nabiki had spotted the hole that none of them were talking about.

The plan for the guys was a simple one, creep in close and then raise hell, but doing that plainly required the advantage of surprise. Without it things might get very nasty very quickly. Not that Nabiki didn't think the guys could handle it, but whether they could handle it without losing another one of them was too loaded a question to ask, she didn't exactly have a huge supply of genuine friends to lose.

Unfortunately someone had to go and raise the possibility that there was a magical alarm set about the camp, one that might already have been triggered when Ranma had sneaked in to eavesdrop and identify these folks.

Slavers weren't exactly used to being attacked but these lot had apparently already been discussing the chances that they had really lost the people who had been following them, they had reason to worry.

That they hadn't obviously reacted when Ranma had done his recce wasn't much help either, there could always have been quiet preparations that the pig tailed warrior had missed, or even more magic used to disguise them. For that matter the mage they were all presuming was in the wagon could already have started to set up a nasty trap for when the scout's friends cmae back with him.

The only way to tell was to get someone magically aware close enough to look, and the only one who stood a snowball's chance in hades of doing that was Nabiki. For all his newfound confidence Gos was still Gos and therefore slightly more clumsy than the average recently awoken bear and slightly less subtle than the average half brick.

Not that Nabiki was feeling much better at the moment, every last lttle sound she made as she crept closer and closer to the badguys seeming to be loud enough to wake the dead and even her heartbeat seeming to sound like a bass drum in the otherwise still air of the late afternoon.

They had of course discussed waiting until nightfall to make their attack on the camp, but what with the flashy pyrotechnics that Ryoga and Ranma were likely to be chucking about they had decided that darkness was definitely not going to be their friend. When you added in that the break in the rain could end at any moment and thus significantly reduce their fighting strength by the factor of one pig-boy, waiting hadn't really seemed smart at all.

Nabiki's hand settled into another muddy puddle with a muted squeltch and her focus was dragged back to what she was supposed to be concentrating on. For the moment the rest of the plan was irrelevant, everything that came later for worrying about later, right then she had to focus on not sprouting a feathered wood and steel ornament delivered to her at high velocity from one of the crossbows.

Which apparently was just a matter of taking her time and moving really really slowly, or so Ranma had said, just after he had reeled off a load of other suggestions of how to sneak and she had less than politely informed him that she wasn't going to remember any of that 'shit.'

It wasn't just that she was scared, although considering what she was doing and her comparative lack of experience with anything like this sort of danger she definitely reserved the right to be, and it wasn't just that the others by necessity would be some distance from her, it was also all the unknown bits, had they really already been tipped off, could she really creep well enough to not be spotted, would she really be good enough to spot the trap if there was one.

No matter how much Ranma and the others had insisted, some more kindly than others, that sneaking up on folk was something she was very good at and had been doing all her life, this really didn't feel that much the same as the sneaky snapshots and quiet eavesdropping she had done at Furinikan.

For one thing it had involved a lot less mud.

This was hardly the path she had imagined her life taking, building a successful career in private enterprise maybe, journalism at a push but not 'creeping through mud and alien undergrowth towards some sadistic assholes and the innocents they had kidnapped for sale so that her friends could be sure there wasn't a magical trap waiting for them before they went in and kicked some ass'.

"Focus" she whispered to herself again, fighting to stop another shiver running through her body. It was all well and good trying to follow Ranma's advice about too much clothing distancing you from the ground you were creeping through and sensible enough to have lost the baggier stuff but this ground was still wet through and shortly after she had started creeping so was Nabiki. The net result was that she wasn't only muddy and wet but also freezing her pointy bits off.

Then someone coughed and Nabiki finally managed that focus she had been trying for, mostly through sheer fear freezing everything but her mind. The cough had been mere feet away.

Which meant that she was lot closer than she had intended to be and still hadn't felt any hint of a magical presence, whatever else the mage was doing with his time it wasn't setting up magical alarms to detect people sneaking up on them.

"You reckon t' boss will let us 'ave a turn with 'er" groused a voice, thickly accented and distinctly brutish sounding, whatever else the speaker was he certainly wasn't well educated.

"Nah" another voice replied, seeming to be only marginally further away than the first one, "bastard's enjoying himself too much" he insisted and Nabiki had to fight down the urge to growl at the pair of them. There was little doubt as to what they were discussing, or rather who, it had been the final straw that had removed any of Nabiki's last objections to doing this, Ranma had reported that one of the girls in the camp, the new slaves, had clearly been misused by the guards.

Of course he had tried to put it more delicately than that, tried to say what he meant without saying it, but Ranma was still Ranma and he had done a crap job of it right up until Ukyo had connected the dots and growled loud enough to frighten off the local wildlife.

To be honest Nabiki wasn't sure what had stopped Ranma running right in there and then and rescuing the girl, and she rather suspected that he might have should that 'misuse' have been happening while he was close enough to see it, but she was grateful he hadn't been asked to make that choice, as confident as she was in the young man's outstanding abilities he wasn't operating at full par and the memory of that one lucky enchanted shot at Konatsu was still fresh in her mind.

Just in case she was wrong Nabiki carefully recalled and ran through the exercise she had read in Gos's tome, the one about sensing other magic around you, and then suppressed a sigh of relief when she once more came up empty.

Magic was a tricky thing, trickier than most folk would ever understand, it was powerful beyond the imaginations of most men but wilder than any rule could govern. The mages of this world used chants and gestures to force that power into shapes they could use but the magic itself naturally resisted any attempt to sculpt it.

This meant that anytime a spell was cast, the magic was successfully forced into a form, it left a stain on the area around it. Over time that stain would ebb away, would be washed out by the natural regenerative forces, but as long as the spell lingered it took a great deal of skill to even slightly mask it's presence; and mages with that sort of skill did not accompany slave raids.

All of which meant that Nabiki's part in this was done, just as soon as she signalled the others…..

Which wasn't exactly going to be easy with numbnuts and numbskull sitting four feet away.

The original plan had called for her to slink back the way she had come, thus being even further from the fight when it did start, no doubt a factor in why Ranam hadn't planned something more elaborate, and then imitate a particular bird noise that Ranma had made her practice. But obviously creeping away wasn't the safest option anymore and working up the nerve to make the relevant noise was going to be a little more difficult than anticipated.

After all if she got unlucky and one of the nearby numpty brothers would turn out to be a budding ornithologist and her attempt at a bird noise would be much akin to painting herself orange and doing a rendition of night fever.

She needed another plan

She was still working on plan C when she heard the muffled thud of two folk falling gently to the turf they were sitting on. She hadn't heard the person who ad caused it in the slightest but a little voice in the back of her head told her that she should have expected him, there simply wasn't a chance in hell that Ranma was ever going to allow her to go into danger alone, even without this quiet bond she knew they had the man's spine deep honour code simply wasn't going to allow him to sit by and let her do this alone.

At the same time he also seemed to have learned a lesson from his time with Akane and hadn't had the argument that he might have, hadn't insisted that he protect her and indeed had done his level best to make sure that his protection wouldn't have have been discovered if it wasn't needed. Had she not needed the help then Nabiki doubted she ever would have found out he had been following her.

While the implied lack of faith in her abilities rankled a little it really wasn't as important right then as not having had to come up with a plan D. Since plan C had been 'run like hell and hope one of the others gets to her in time' she really didn't want to know just how desperate plan D might have needed to be.

"Thanks stud" she breathed, trusting the young man's freakily good hearing to pick it up as she finally relaxed and let some of the tension built up over the last hour of creeping flow out of her body.

For a little moment longer there was only the quiet continuing sound of the damp forest around her and the slightly muffled camp noises ahead of her, peace seeming to have returned to this little corner of the Bremon foot region.

Then a cry split the cool evening air, one that the people in that camp had absolutely no chance of understanding, even if it hadn't been projected with more force and determination than grammatical correctness, and even if another different cry hadn't rapidly joined it.

Ranma's 'fierce tiger domineering' and Ryoga's depression bullet flared into life even as the calls were still sounding, the shining evidence of the strength of soul the two martial artist originators possessed almost immediately streaking out from their hands and lashing through the air to seek out the crossbowmen on top of the wagons.

The mote-tailed comets became full fledged flaring blasts as they impacted on the confused targets, a wash of energy accompanying the detonations sweeping out a bare heartbeat later.

And the two targets being thrown right off of their perches and through the air, still none the wiser as to what exactly had happened to them.

The rest of the camp had little time to gape though, even less time to work out exactly what was going on, even before they cold come to the hugely unlikely conclusion that they were under attack by at least two mages they had more urgent things to worry about, like the sudden flurry of throwing knives that was winging it's way into the camp, or more precisely the people in the camp.

They might not have been spatulas but that wasn't slowing Ukyo down a great deal, each throw fired off with a speed and precision that would have truly daunted even the most flamboyant of folk who made their living by such skills.

The fact that each knife very carefully didn't hit lethal locations, very deliberately maimed rather than executed was perhaps not immediately appreciated by the people being hit, not least of which because of the rather 'personal' locations Ukyo was choosing for those disabling shots.

Even so three of the guards did manage to draw their arms and might have managed some form of defence but for the fact they were quite as outclassed as they were.

The first of them, a young guy for whom slaving had been a natural progression from the bullying of the children of his neighbours, was perhaps one of those least able to understand exactly what was going on. Like a lot of bullies the idea of being on the losing side was a bit alien to him and the fact that his bruisers muscles and wicked looking machete was largely irrelevant had completely passed him by.

Instead he growled something unintelligible and was about to move on to some choice insults about the parentage of the attackers when he finally got his just deserts, a red and black blur swept out of the woods moving at a speed his brain just wasn't quite able to follow.

So he never saw that blur resolve itself into a certain cursed martial artist, nor managed to follow as said martial artist turned the rush into a kick and that kick into a half dozen more.

He did however have a brief moment to feel the pain that resulted, the flares of agony that ran from the wrist and elbow of his weapon arm over his torso and hip, and right up to his still roaring face. He had time to feel his bones grind and his muscles compress, and time to feel the ground part company with the soles of his boots, but by the time his back was bouncing off of the cart behind him he was long away into the embrace of unconsciousness. Which probably saved him more of a beating.

The second was perhaps somewhat more skilful than the first, an older guy whose rather particular tastes had led him to the trade, and kept him an outsider even there, but one who knew how to use the slender rapier he had whipped free of his scabbard. Much like the first however he really wasn't quite prepared for the devastating effects a lifetime of training had given his attackers the ability to perform.

His rapier had been snapped before he had even identified the form in front of him as a human being, the hand that did it being turned up a moment later and delivered with a palm strike of bone-crunching force to his sternum, all almost before the broken end of the rapier had fallen to the grass.

His chest cavity compressed, his ribs and muscles flexing under the force of the single blow, and the air that had been in his lungs blew out nearly explosively through his agape mouth.

As he folded up a sweeping kick connected a knee very precisely with the side of his head and darkness rushed up to consume him as his mind finally admitted the inevitable fact that he had finally met a person he would never subject to his perversions.

The last of them, the only one still standing as Ukyo's second volley made sure of the people she had injured, was by sheer luck, the leader of the group. He was also perhaps the only one of them who had stood a real chance against any one of the martial artists attacking the camp. But any chance he did have had been wasted by the time he had been forced to waste pulling up his trousers.

Had he not decided to help himself to one of the new slavegirls, had he for once kept his urges under control and thought instead of what would have been best for his group then he might have managed to at least make a good showing against the young folk steamrolling through his guards. But he simply wasn't that sort of guy.

Unfortunately for him the man bearing down on him had never been the sort to put his own personal comfort before his martial ability, otherwise he never would ahev allowed a crone to repeatedly beat on him with a boulder; he also happened to be thoroughly bent out of shape over a girl who had suffered something all too alike to what the leader had been putting his latest victim through. Perhaps more immediately importantly however said storm of vengeance was not exactly well known for holding his temper.

Ryoga had only needed a moment to guess what the last man had been doing, had only needed one whimper from the girl to know all too much about how bad this man was, and at that point a little switch in his head had flicked once more and any intent of restraint had been forgotten.

Ryoga had no need for a sword himself, his family school's iron cloth technique making his belt more than appropriate enough as a substitute.

The man managed one parry, his sword stopping the suddenly rigid leather just before it could neatly bisect him through the waist, but he was used to fighting swordsmen, not martial artists, and never saw the elbow strike that followed it coming.

Nor would he ever see anything again as that blow not only shattered his cheekbone, fractured his skull and rattled his brain around inside it's cranial cushion, but also span his chin about fast enough to put an irresistible torsion onto his neck.

The double shatter of first the man's face and then his spine sounded loud across the already stilling clearing, the thud that followed as the man's now limp body cartwheeled head over heels to the floor more or less irrelevant after that.

What had been an almost lively camp in this remote clearing was suddenly very still indeed, only the groaning of the injured breaking through the silence that had descended every bit as suddenly as the attack had started.

From his-her place in the center of the camp, amid the fallen forms of the slavers, Ranma slowly looked about, not yet allowing himself to relax from the fighting stance he was in.

Slowly he took it all in, the places of all his friends, Ukyo just inside the tree line, spare knives still in hand, Ryoga standing over the fallen form of the man he had just broken, Nabiki kneeling in cover with her crossbow ready just in case, the stunned expressions of the slaves that had seen the attack, the slowly writhing forms of the people Ukyo had put down, and the still forms of the people that the others had dropped.

About then the slaves that had been hitherhto stunned into silence began to shout, to scream to cry, their mingled voices shattering the calm and bouncing arounf the clearing in complete disorder. Whatever they were trying to say there were too many of them trying to say it at once and Ranma didn't have time to talk it out.

"Shut UP!" he hollered at the slave wagons, a brief flare of his power flashing in his-her good eye more than enough re-enforcement to assure compliance from the already part 'tamed' new slaves. "Clean up and Mage" he said much more quietly, turning back to the others and leaving the other issues until they were sure the life threatening ones had been dealt with.

"Door hasn't moved" Nabiki asserted from her position, earning her a confirming nod. Quietly Ranma was very much impressed with how she had handled herself this time, it could not have been easy for her to do all that creeping, he knew form personal experience how much the mind liked to play dirty tricks under those situations, and yet she had not only done it right but she had also found the time to think of something else she could do during the fight.

It showed a lot of what it took.

"Ukyo stay on cover" Ranma ordered, not explicitly saying that he didn't trust Nabiki's aim but clearly aware that there were an awful lot of people lying around this camp that might recover before they were meant to.

"Ryoga" Ranma continued, calling the man to him for the next part. But this time the lost boy didn't follow up and steadily all eyes turned back to him, where he stood staring at the fallen, tangled form at his feet.

"Not now" Ranma asserted, his voice steel hard, "later!" he insisted, "Living first then the dead" he quoted, revealing another depth of training that to be honest Nabiki didn't want to know how he had acquired.

Ryoga, unable to resist the steel in his rival-friend's voice, looked up and numbly followed the order he had been given, closing in on the pig tailed martial artist's position.

"Breaking point on the door" Ranma supplied, stepping back to give the lost-man room and dropping into a familiar stance that told the others exactly what was in store for the mage if he was still standing after his door flew in at him.

Nabiki immediately moved to object, to warn them that paranoid mages regularly trapped their doors, but by then it was too late, the almost robotic motions of the pig-man had brought his finger to the door and his whispered word had proclaimed the completion of his own act of will.

The door shattered completely, its wooden surface turning into a mass of flying splinters that might have scared the hell out of people not used to the same spliters not being made of stone.

But they didn't hit the mage within, he was too well protected within the layers of bedding that covered his form, from head to toe. Suddenly it was very clear why he hadn't been making use of his powers, why he hadn't risen up to protect the rest of the group, the man was far beyond caring, dead and cold apparently days before.

Shrugging Ranma dissipated the ball of energy he had been collecting and finally allowed his stance to relax.

"Okay" he said, "get Gos in here" he ordered, nodding towards Nabiki, "and lets sort this lot out" he added, sweeping a hand around to indicate the fallen, beaten foes.

By then the residents of the less salubrious wagons were starting to once again consider presenting their case, increasingly afraid that this wasn't a rescue but just a change of ownership.

However one man among them stopped the next outcry before it could happen, his own voice indicating a significant enough strength of purpose to temporarily at least give the others pause. "let us out and we can help you" the man offered, his accent speaking not only of still more foreign places but also of authority and possibly education.

Ranma was about to tell the guy to 'button it' not wanting to have to deal with the issues accompanying the release of the captives while still trying to properly capture the others, far too much could go wrong during the confusion, but Nabiki beat him to it.

"Hold on just a few moments more" she insisted, stepping from her half cover and into the edge of the clearing, "let us stabilise the situation first" she said, automatically dropping into the sort of speak she had heard used by her own world's soldiers. "Don't worry" she added, deliberately evenly, "these guys are good at this" she said, all the while still in fact trying to keep her racing heartbeat under control.

All she had needed to do to signal Gos had been to flare her own magical aura, something that even the lowliest of novices could do and detect being done, the once crippled mage would see that and know that they were either in desperate need of his help or had the situation sorted. As long as her aura didn't flash again the guy would know that there was no need to come in mob handed, and that he had time to bring the last member of their party in too.

Meanwhile Ukyo had been deliberately, if not particularly gently, binding both the wounds and the hands of the folk she had downed and Ranma had been doing the same for the others. Ryoga should have been helping but he had become distracted when his eyes had once more fallen on the crumpled form of the late leader of the group.

"May we at least know what you intend to do with us?" the cultured man in the cart asked, having added a trace of an edge and raised his voice just a little, to once more insist that his fellow captives let him talk.

"We're going to let you go" Nabiki said, as if that was the most obvious thing in the world, just not thinking about how rare such beneficence would be in this world, "we'd hardly go through all this just to let you rot in your-"

Whatever else she had planned to say was drowned out by the sudden outcry form the wagons, the joy and relief bursting free of the poor souls that had all but given up hope completely.

Nabiki raised an eyebrow and let a hint of a smile fall across her face, letting the sheer emotion wash over her for a moment and finally finding the balm to wash away the last of her fear.

"What's the catch?" the man asked, his voice cutting through the cries like a knife, his slightly exotic eyes narrowing in an obviously suspicious manner. Clearly he was expecting some sort of epithet, some little modifier to be added about 'after a term of service' or 'as soon as your families pay the ransom' but he had no way of knowing the sort of motivations that really drove his rescuers.

Nabiki found her smile only getting all the larger as she saw the last of the slavers being bound and lowered her crossbow completely, "No catch" she insisted, stepping towards the bar that secured the door, "my friends and I just don't like slavers" she explained.

"You're saying that a talented troupe of warrior mages just happened to be in the area? And took on a dozen slavers just because they felt like it?" the man said, his refusal to believe such as evident as the nose on his face.

"Yep" Nabiki smirked, delivering a hard palm strike to the bar to start it moving and silently smiling even more at the description of 'warrior mages.' Somehow she really didn't think that Ranma was going to appreciate being told they thought he was any kind of spell caster. "Only" she said, drawing the door slowly open, "only one and a half of us are mages" she supplied.

As the slaves held up their shackles for opening the man who had apparently elected himself their leader just shook his head, apparently refusing to buy that either.

Nabiki turned back to look for where the key might be and found a bunch of them being flung in her direction by a slightly scowling redhead.

She raised an interrogative eyebrow even as she caught the keys, asking what was wrong without saying a word and knowing that Ranma wouldn't miss the question .

"You should have waited for us" Ranma supplied, stepping closer, "just in case" he added, looking over the pleading forms of the soon to be ex-slaves. It was only then that Nabiki started really thinking about what might have gone wrong, all sorts of scenarios where a desperate slave or two, not believing they were being freed, tried to take her hostage to ensure they were actually let go.

It would probably have made Ranma hurt more of them and that wasn't soemthing that the pig-tailed warrior was evidently appreciating the idea of.

"You girls are in charge?" the prison-leader said, changing tack as he looked for the catch still. If they weren't in charge then there was evey chance that whichever man was would overrule them, in which case he would have to be-

"Who you calling a girl?" the redhead suddenly demanded, stopping that line of thought dead. Needless to say the man being shouted at was a bit lost for a reply at that point, the wet material of the redhead's shirt leaving him in very little doubt that she was in fact a she.

"Um sorry?" he offered, giving up.

"Humph" Ranma replied, with what amounted to close enough to a pout to make Nabiki laugh aloud.

"Right" Nabiki insisted, before Ranma could really get the hump, and that pout got tooo cute, "let's see those hands!"


	18. Silent night

The campfire, a good few feet away from where Nabiki was sat, was flickering with an almost merry light, the stars above shining very brightly indeed, especially to the thirty or so recently released slaves. This world being as it was there were also the faerie lights shining brightly too, distinctly coloured motes that seemed to float somewhere between the night sky and the darkened world beneath.

Every so often people would try to explain what they were but as yet nobody had come up with much better than the official answer 'sometimes they are and sometimes they aren't.'

Nabiki had given that same line to Ranma when he had gotten around to asking her, and even now she could still summon up a smile at the confused and frustrated look that she had received in return. It madde her remember a certain character from tv called Xellos and had made very sure that she wasn't about to tell him the real answer even if she did find it.

Tonight however her smiles were not alone, all around her the once beaten and broken were doing little to restrain the joy that they felt.

For many of them the reality of the release was still sinking in, during the slavers' flight from their homeland they had all dared hope more than once for such a thing but that had been dashed some time ago and most had resigned themselves to a life in an iron collar.

Which made this first night of renewed freedom all the sweeter, and their smiles all the readier.

Of course the drink was perhaps helping a touch as well. The slavers had not exactly been in very short supply of alcohol, it being a staple of their payment almost as much as the coin they had been expecting, and the Nerimites had almost offhandedly turned it over to them, none of them exactly big drinkers themselves.

Of course none of those same Nerimites were exactly planning for the very long term, in their minds they were still only a matter of hours from the gate that would finally take them home.

Home where they could get the treatment they needed, where the pain that still daylily bugged Ranma might be surgically fixed, where Akane's condition might be treated, where there were police forces and laws that didn't extend from the strength of a swordarm, where there were fast food joints and central heating, where they could go for a trip without having to stink of horse sweat and where slavers were a remote evil rather than a ever present cloud.

Of course it wasn't going to fix all their problems, for all the wonders of medical and psychiatric science the lot of them had a long way to go before they were better, but at least it would be a start, and at least things wouldn't be getting any worse.

"They seem happy" Ukyo observed as she sat down next to the darker haired, smiling girl. There was of course a smile on her face too, something that had been rare enough since the incident, but even Ukyo's personal storm-cloud had struggled to overcome the joy of thirty people literally given their lives back, even that certain blond girl appeared to be laughing along, albeit a little on the edge of things.

"They do" Nabiki agreed, sipping at the mug of tea she held in her hand. It was not a good blend but after the cold of the wet day just about anything warm and wet was welcome.

"So do you" Ukyo added, clearly prying after the source of Nabiki's smiles.

"I was thinking about fast food" she supplied, "and a day without saddles" she added, shifting a little and letting her smile get broader still.

After the fight there had been a very quiet argument as to where exactly they were going to camp, in the end it had been Ryoga who had swung it and they had moved the whole lot, prisoners and former prisoners to a new site, anything to stop the pig-boy staring at the spot he had killed the slaver leader.

That hadn't been the only argument though, far from it, instead they had had to fight off a group of the former slaves who had been intent on taking immediate and bloody revenge on the bound forms of their erstwhile captors. There had also been considerable discussion over the disposal of the sole bottle of healing draughts that they had found left in the slaver's possession. There were a lot of needy people and was not a lot of the good stuff to go around. That some of those people were former slaver's whose wounds really did require some serious attention had only made things worse.

In the end Ryoga had sorted the problem by siply taking the bottle and pressing it into the hands of the blond girl who he had rescued. After seeing the way he had dealt with the lead slaver and being subjected to his stony silence since nobody had seriously considered arguing with him.

In the end they had managed to move, had gotten this new fire started and had managed to settle the newly enlarged group down to a meal. It was mostly horseflesh but that was a good deal more than the thirty had had in quite some time.

The meal had given way to the drinks and that in turn brought them to where they were now.

"Oh don't" Ukyo objected, her eyes losing focus for a moment "a hot bath" she said as someone else might have described all the riches in the world, "and some real sake" she added.

Alone among the Japanese contingent Ukyo had dipped significantly into the beverage stocks, but even she, rather to the surprise of some, had stopped fairly quickly. To be honest Nabiki had expected her to get blind drunk now the opportunity had presented itself but perhaps Ukyo had been doing some growing too.

Either that or she was telling the truth when she had said how foul the wine had been.

"and a pregnancy testing kit?" Nabiki supplied, her voice suddenly quieter as she let her chin fall down and her hair hide her eyes.

For a long moment neither of them talked, only the sound of the half-party around the fire disturbing the night air.

"Hell" Ukyo asserted, her voice as quiet as Nabiki's had been. She herself had already had some pretty conculsive evidence that she wasn't pregnant but she had been too wrapped up in her own worries to think about the same issues and how they might be affecting the Tendo girls. "You're late?" she asked, closing her eyes and really hoping very hard indeed that this didn't mean what she thought it did.

"It's okay" Nabiki said, "I'm not very regular at the best of times" she said, trying to sound convinced, "remember, it's why I was on the pill at such a young age" she offered, remembering the day long past when Ukyo had first found out.

In Japan there was still a certain stigma attached to young girls going on the pill, as if they would suddenly decide that a reduced chance of pregnancy meant they had to become village bikes, but after all the kidnapping muck back in Nerima a good few of the girls had quietly gotten a prescription. Which is about when they had found out that Nabiki had been taking the pill in question since she was about fourteen.

She blamed the rather marked expanse in her chest directly on it.

"Sure sugar" Ukyo agreed, trying to sound like she believed her friend.

"It's Akane I am most worried about" Nabiki continued, looking over to where the girl in question lay with her head on Ryoga's lap.

That had been quite a turn up for the books and was not something that Nabiki was sure how to react to. After the fight Ryoga had almost automatically sought out Akane, just to check she was okay. Nabiki wasn't sure if something of the lost boy's own pain had shown through even Akane's haze but for once the youngest Tendo hadn't screamed the human contact away.

Since that point Ryoga and Akane had been more or less one form, silent statues to private pain. Which would be a huge step forwards if Nabiki wasn't worried that Akane's lack of reaction wasn't just a further retreat from the universe.

"She hasn't….?" Ukyo asked, it had been a good time now since the incident and averages said that Akane should have had her 'female time' by now too. Again Ukyo knew that there were a whole load of other reasons why it might not have happened, knew that Akane too wasn't very regular, very few serious athletes were without help, but it really didn't bode well.

"Should have happened last week" Nabiki supplied, sipping at her tea again and looking back towards the fire.

"Oh hell" Ukyo offered, lapsing into silence once more. Back home there would of course be options, a good few more than they had here, especially in the medical institution that Ukyo suspected Akane was headed for, but it was another burden that the youngest of them really didn't need.

"So" the chef offered a seeming very long time later, "what about you and Ranma?" she asked, and had to smile as the Ice queen visibly twitched in surprise at being asked.

"Ranma?" Nabiki asked, thrown for a loop.

"You remember" Ukyo supplied, "Bout this tall" she said, holding up her hand to about the right height, "dark hair and muscles all over the place?" she said, her eyes twinkling as she added, "butt you could die for?"

"Ukyo!" Nabiki growled, genuinely a little pissed that she would bring this up now of all times.

"What?" the chef replied, "you aren't feeling it?" she said, waving her hand out towards the camp and the stars beyond, "that after fight thing?" she said, getting only a glared demand for more explanation in response.

"Where everything seems brighter colours, more vital, where after risking your life you feel-

"More alive" Nabiki supplied, finally getting this par of what Ukyo was talking about.

"Horny as hell" Ukyo replied, with that twinkle in her eye shining bright. To the skilled observer there were still drawn lines around the edges of her expression that indicated at least some of this had to be forced but Nabiki could quickly see why.

Ukyo had always been one of the 'earthiest' of them, one of those who most readily admitted her appetites and desires, the incident had threatened that and now Ukyo was trying very hard to fight back.

Right now the both of them had a choice, and it was the same choice the blond from the camp had, they could shut that part of them away and deny it, could lump that all together with the things that went wrong and abandon it or they could try to get back closer to where they were.

Ukyo was here trying what the blond was trying with her people down by the fire, trying the thoughts on for size. Everybody dealt with things in different ways, in their own times, and Ukyo was here testing her waters.

And perhaps also trying to help her friend to do the same.

"You" Nabiki replied, smiling a little forcedly herself and barely catching herself before she said something in jest that might have hurt a great deal, "have no idea" she finished instead, not really meaning a word of it, but smiling anyway.

And perhaps a little bit of her heart was a little freer for the lie.

Meanwhile across the camp another conversation was happening, one with perhaps less soul searching but nevertheless very important to the way the future looked for a good many people.

"You know that they will be hanged when we find the troops" Falco, the self appointed leader of the former slaves said, nodding towards the cage ahead of them.

He was sat next to Ranma, still unaware that the redhead form was not the form the warrior had been born to and still quietly trying to work out exactly what was going on in the heads of these ever so strange people.

In the end Falco had been forced to accept that the people who had come to his rescue really didn't want anything from him, a fact that had been all the more re-enforced when the same group had told the rescuees that come tomorrow they would be parting ways. But he still couldn't quite accept that people as obviously capable and as obviously foreign as this group were would care enough to take on quite so many slavers without expectation of reward.

At first he had assumed that there were more of them than there were, that the four he had seen down at the camp had just been the most obvious agents of a more significant force. But he had dropped that idea too, not unhelped when the only re-enforcements that had turned up had been a very young looking mageling and an obviously damaged girl younger still than the rest of the rescuers.

Perhaps a little had been explained when the group had insisted on not letting the slaver bastards be butchered for their crimes, had insisted that the proper process was done, but it still was far from all the explanation that Falco needed.

"Yup" Ranma replied. He-she was here on this little mound watching the former slavers as they sat in one of their own prisoner boxes, not just to see that they didn't escape but also to ensure that nobody had another attempt at 'settling the score' as had nearly happened back at the camp.

"Yet you won't let us…" Falco asked

"Nope" Ranma replied, idly flexing his-her damaged hand to fight off the ever present threat of cramps.

"Because it wouldn't be right" Falco offered, quoting the excuse that Ranma had given earlier. Of course the reason had been a good deal less persuasive then than the glow surrounding the warrior-woman's hands but Falco wasn't the sort to let things lie that easily.

"It's important" Ranma asserted, frowning a little as he-she fougt to understand why Falco wouldn't see that.

"I don't think they much care who stretches their necks" Falco replied

"But we should do" Ranma argued, with enough of an edge in his voice to prompt the guy to leave that subject for a while.

"So where are you headed?" Falco asked, deliberately changing tack. Of course he already had his suspicions but how much he was told would be indicative in itself.

"South" Ranma lied, automatically and far from convincingly even in the darkness. Misleading people about your next destination had been one of the things that Genma had hammered in from a very early age.

Falco however completely missed the signs, after all that just happened to be the direction he thought the group might be headed. "Towards the Tabernacle then?" he suggested, as if it was the obvious answer.

"Yup" Ranma agreed, having not a lot of idea what a Tabernacle was, but content to let this guy think whatever he wanted about where they were going.

"That explains a lot" the man replied, nodding as if a piece of the puzzle had fallen into place. The Tabernacle was the home to the indisputably most powerful healers on the face of the planet, if these powerful types were on a pilgrimage there to get their friend fixed it might explain their reluctance to have blood on their hands.

"It does?" Ranma asked, too surprised to keep up even the pretence he had managed.

"Sure it does" Falco replied, with a semi-triumphant smile, "you're from some far away land" he said, waving a hand to still Ranma's objections, "from a far away land" he reiterated, "and you heard that the Matriarch can even raise the dead" he supplied, "so you're taking your master's wife there to be healed" he said somewhat smug now he had figured it all out.

Ranma however took a little while to put things together, he was still working on it when the man dug deeper.

"You and the brunette are presumably his 'bodyguards'" Falco said, putting just enough emphasis on the word to imply that there were some 'other' duties involved in that post, "The mageling is presumably hired and has brought his 'apprentice' along too" at which point the man actually nudged Ranma and gave him-her a wink.

In his defence Falco was a bit high on suddenly being free, and more than a bit tipsy form the cheap wine he had been sharing, but he really coldn't have called it much more wrong.

Ranma decked him


	19. Another dawn

The morning dawned reluctantly, a lazy haze floating around the grass floored scrubland that had been last night's home for the little band. It left most of the bedrolls of that group more than a little sodden and managed to put somewhat of a dampener on the far flying emotions of the previous night.

By the time they had done breakfast and some hot brewed tea however things were already looking up. The mist was departing, the sun was shining and Falco still hadn't put his foot in his mouth.

Admittedly that could well have been because he was still a little woozy from the previous night. He hadn't said as much but most people assumed it was because he had perhaps partaken a little too enthusiastically of the wine.

One or two folks had suggested that there was a little more to the story than that, that his lethargy might be more due to lack of sleep and that a certain redhead might have had something to do with that. But those people, in the face of the guffaws and growls from their rescuers quickly discarded the idea and guessed that maybe the redhead just wasn't that sort of girl.

They were more right than they knew.

"They're going to start in on those guys about as soon as they are out of sight," Ukyo offered. Along with the others she was resetting the exiles' gear for the very last leg of their journey to Bremon but there was clearly something weighing on her mind.

Last night had been good for her, she and Nabiki had managed a good few laughs and she had hardly missed the booze at all, ish. She might not have actually extracted much form the Ice Queen about her feelings for their pig tailed friend but she did feel they had leapt a few hurdles anyway.

"Uh" Gos replied, just in case someone was talking to him. Last night he had, as usual, been sequestered with his books and this morning was little different, while he was trying hard to help it was clear his mind was a long way away on things a good deal more esoteric than the tightness of their horses' saddle girths.

"You're objecting?" Ranma asked, he-she was not in a good mood today and it didn't exactly take a lot of work to guess why. First there was that rumour that everyone else was finding so amusing and then there was the fact that despite his-her best efforts this morning the poor bloke had not managed to spend more than a few moments male.

Even when he first changed back things hadn't worked right, one of the few revellers still awake at the time had been watching, for some rather obvious damp shirt reasons, and had been so surprised to see the change that they had not only spurted the water in their mouth all over Ranma, thus changing him right back again, but staggered far enough to knock the rest of the water off the fire.

The second and third attempts hadn't fared much better and even Ranma had been forced to accept that for the moment it was easier to stay as a girl. None of which was much helped by Ryoga's continuing non-piggyness. Somehow that guy had completely avoided the misfortunes that had struck Ranma and without even really trying to.

Instead the lost boy was still apparently stuck in that same deep thoughtful mode that the events of the day before had left him in. Not one of the Nerimites had to think hard to guess what exactly had put him into it, but not one of them really had an answer. Unlike these others around them they had all been brought up in a world where it was considered wrong to take a life in anger and no matter how little that dead man had deserved to draw another breath the fact remained that the only reason he couldn't was literally because Ryoga had lost his temper.

That two of the other slavers had also died was a different matter, every reasonable effort had been made to spare them, even the situation with Ohlmin had been different, there the intention had always been to leave none standing, that had been calm and rational by comparison.

Back in Nerima Ryoga's temper had nearly done the same thing countless times, the very first time he had really fought Ranma there he had all but taken the head off the woman who had finally claimed his heart, but always there had been another there to stop the danger becoming the fact. Simply put Ryoga had never really had to deal with the worst-case scenarios that his temper could cause.

"Not so much" Ukyo admitted, not really having the same compunctions as the lads did, but even so there was a hint of the unease there. She had every reason to hate that kind of person and certainly hadn't had a single compunction about the rather personal wounds she had inflicted upon them during the fight. But it was a long way from that still to the point where she would be happy knowing that cold blooded murder was going to be committed on anyone.

"Best not to think about it too much" Nabiki said, her deeply furrowed brow telling the others she wasn't having much luck following her own advice. "Soon we'll be back where such things just don't happen," she said, glossing over some of the less salubrious actions of their homegrown criminal fraternities.

"Just the matter of a mountain and a dragon to go" Ukyo offered, a little ironically. Phoenix Mountain had been one thing, a demonstration of just how far some of them could be pushed, but it had also been an exception and she was only too aware that there had been some very unique circumstances involved.

Besides, by all accounts, this mother of all dragons was a good deal bigger than Saffron ever was. If the stories she had been told were true then it was big enough to make that godling look very small indeed.

"A big dragon" Ranma corrected, demonstrating not only that he hadn't missed a few of those details himself but also that he had left another aspect of that younger version of himself behind. The old Ranma they had all known really wouldn't have bothered thinking ahead that far, trusting instead to his own ability to adapt. Apparently life had corrected that oversight too.

When Ranma had fought Herb he had been given a little taste of what someone with draconic blood could manage, and they had all but destroyed a mountain. This time that simply wasn't going to be an option, they needed the Gate to get home and they would be needing to get non-combatants through the danger zone. Added to all of that of course was the small fact that Ranma was not on top form, he was still adapting to the rather huge blindspot and damaged hand that had been Ohlmin's gifts to him.

Sure he would have the help of more friends this time but at the end of the day none of them were so much fools as to think that anyone but the pig tailed warrior was going to have to bear the brunt of any fight.

"Then lets just hope it's still sleeping" Nabiki interrupted, cutting off that line of thought before it could go too far. Better than all the others she knew this new Ranma's moods and knew just how easily he could depress himself. While she wasn't exactly mourning the bordering arrogant confidence she still had had plenty of reasons over the years to curse the lingering effects being forced to take Shampoo's life had left her friend with.

"Aye" Ukyo agreed, reaching out to slap a hand onto the side of their cart for luck, this world had already cost her far too much to invite more fights they didn't need.

Which brought her back to the people now heading away form their overnight camp and her earlier comment. Simply put the only way that she was going to be able to do anything about the distaste she was feeling at the actions they were sure to do was to go with them until such a point as they did find some relevant authorities and even then there would be arguments and probably more fights. It would mean more time in this dark, dangerous world and more risk to her friends.

The lives of the slavers just weren't worth that to her.

The small posse of Nerimans waited and watched as the caravan started back on the way they had come, heading for the lands they had been born in and a life renewed, then slowly turned their own small procession back towards the mountain and set off once more.

By arrangement Ukyo was to do the scouting today, Ranma having made a call to make sure that their tracks weren't followable just in case and therefore falling back behind them instead of his usual position on point.

There had been a little discussion about that, Ryoga even at one point suggesting that he be the one to be the trail party, he was after all a very capable tracker as his years of pursuit behind Ranma had ably demonstrated. The group however had just looked at him until he shrugged and gave up on the idea. After all the chances of never seeing the guy again if they got even a little ahead of where he could see them were somewhat too real to let him off his proverbial leash.

Besides, as Ukyo had rather harshly pointed out, she had managed a similar feat for a good chunk longer than Ryoga had, and without falling into any cursed pools along the way.

Which had almost started one of the oldest of Neriman arguments, and had looked like it would for long enough to put a fond smile onto Nabiki's lips (and scare Gos out of his studies).

Then Ryoga had simply stopped fuming, had clamped his jaw shut and balled his fists before stalking away. Where there should have been an explosion of violence that dragged all the fighters in there was suddenly an almost deafening silence.

"Owch" Nabiki had said, able to guess as to exactly what had changed even if the others weren't. It was a hard road that Ryoga had apparently chosen for himself and one that her sister had never quite managed despite her own promises to try.

The rain started again a little after midday and was soon beating down with that same relentless monotony that the group had seen on the first day free of the Waste.

"It'll probably save a few of the slavers for another day or two" Nabiki observed, she was once more sat next to Gos on the last of their wagons, driving rather than riding while he had continued to pour over his tomes. With the rain he had been forced to stop and was very obviously none too happy about it.

"Huh?" he asked, his tone somewhere between temper and confusion. It wasn't quite obvious whether he was irked at being dragged from his reverie or irked because of the idea that he might care what had happened to the other group.

For all the other changes that had been wrought around the young man his rather linear mind still seemed only really to want to hold one idea at a time, as soon as the other group had disappeared he had put them from his mind all but completely.

"Can't see them stopping to have a hanging party in the rain" Nabiki explained, deliberately ignoring his tone. At the end of the day her need for conversation far outweighed his need to sulk about not being able to read.

Besides she had a few things she had read that she needed to check up on with him, she just wasn't about to admit that straight off the bat.

"I guess" Gos replied, having apparently not thought of that angle at all.

"You could do worse than hooking backup with them" Nabiki offered, nodding once more in the direction that the caravan had taken, "cash in on some of that goodwill?" she suggested.

On his face she saw exactly what she had expected to see, the very visible evidence that he had entertained exactly the same sort of thoughts. "In fact" she continued, "I was surprised you didn't go with them?" she said. Once the rest of them left through that gate, assuming they managed it, he would effectively be left alone in this wilderness, okay he would have all the gear they left behind as well as the magic he had managed to learn but he would still essentially be deserted.

"I thought about it," he admitted, not guessing that Nabiki would already know and feeling very obviously guilty about even that thought. "But I owe you all" he said, his voice firm. There would have been a day not so very long ago he never would have acknowledged either the guilt or the debt, if he had even felt either of them, but a chair can teach a lot of lessons too.

"So" Nabiki said, "You working on a sleeping spell?" she asked, knowing that as long as they were headed towards this mountain Gos wouldn't be forgetting the reasons for it or the end result and deliberately looking for a lighter subject as well as some idea of what he had planned.

Back in Nerima Gos had been almost an invertebrate, willing to give some very extreme plans a go but folding under the least bit of pressure. He might have developed a whole load more confidence this side but Nabiki was guessing that some part of him would still hold true and would be searching for some way to avoid playing fair against anything as scary as the dragon they had learned about.

"Ha!" Gos replied, looking at her almost as if she had grown another head, "would that I had that sort of power!" he said, emphasising his words to imply just how much power he was talking about.

"Firstly it's a dragon" he insisted, "and they are practically made of magic" he said, simplifying a rather complex and far from completely understood set of magical interactions with physics, "and secondly to cast any spell of that sort of magnitude" he said, drawing out the word again, "I'd need to be grand master Lucius himself!" he said, naming the most famously powerful mage of the world they were in.

"He that good?" Nabiki asked, having heard some facts but not having found any proof to say how much of that was hyperbolae and how much of it grounded in truth.

"I think so" Gos said, turning and looking back the way they came, "I think" he added, nodding towards the distant waste, "he had something to do with that"

"The Waste?" Nabiki asked, a little aghast, nothing she had read even slightly implied that was possible with any level of power.

"The stories say that it was created when two mages duked it out" Gos said, reaching over and tapping the tarp covered books he was hoarding, "Some titanic battle" he explained, "between him and some other mage"

"Him and the Healing hand Matriarch?" Nabiki guessed, choosing the only other serious power they had really heard of, and the one who happened to live near the middle of that waste.

"Nope" Gos argued, shaking his head and waving a hand further out, "he and some other guy" he said, "who was standing where the shattered isles now are" he supplied.

"Shattered" Nabiki asked, having not missed the relevance of the word. She got a nod in reply that answered more than the simple question, and it settled another matter too.

She had been learning the magic forms more out of a pique at not knowing something than any dedication, still half convinced that all they really amounted to were one step up from parlour tricks, that there was nothing really there that technology couldn't duplicate more easily.

But here was her friend talking about the sorts of power that blew verdant lands into deserts and countryside into shattered islands. Even f a little of that energy was seeping over to their side it might well be worth knowing.

"So" she asked, her eyes narrowing a little as she worked on how to phrase this, she had deliberately let Gos lecture her on the myth-history rather than look it up herself because she had wanted him to be in the mood to talk but this was a bit trickier, now she wanted something a good deal more direct, "they weren't presumably using these things?" she asked, tapping the other stack of books where the ritual forms of the spells most commonly used were written.

"Nope" Gos said, nodding along, "they use the next step beyond" he said, and with her prompting he went on to talk about that level instead.

As far as Nabiki was concerned doing things the right way was all well and good for other people but if there were some steps that could be skipped she sure as heck wasn't about to waste her time with them when she could go to the head of the queue. This higher magic was far more likely to translate and, from what she had understood in the tomes she had read, far more to her style anyway.

"That's all we need" Ryoga muttered where he sat in the back of the wagon, "the Ice Queen who can see through walls" he groused.

Next to him Akane didn't appear to hear and even if Ryoga hadn't currently been a pig there is no surety at all that she would have understood, she was still far far away from everything.

The rain didn't thin out for a very long time, but even that didn't stop the looming presence of Bremon becoming more pronounced every hour. By the time that they eventually made camp at the foot of the mountain itself they were not only soaked through once again but they were also collectively well back towards that sombre silence that had dominated their trip across the waste.

Even as they moved around to be in the lee of the mountain and so finally escaped the worst of the rain the mood didn't lift all that much. They were getting close to the end one way or another and they were feeling it.

It had literally been a very long road to this point and the end was far from certain yet, as close as home seemed to be not one of them was counting on this last hurdle being any easier than the ones they had already crossed.

"Any idea how to locate the tunnel?" Ukyo asked, with the others she was sat around the campfire at what they all hoped would be their last stop on this side of the Gate, even the layout of it was a touch less organised than the others they had made, the whole thing quietly insisting it wasn't any more than temporary.

"I could make a new one?" Ryoga suggested, he wasn't much more talkative than he had been since the fight but he was maintaining that real desire to be helpful and apparently that at least could overcome his need for introspection.

"Not a good plan" Ranma insisted, stirring the pot that they were all clustered around. In it was a good selection of the food supplies that had lasted this far along with some game he had caught today.

"Why not?" Ukyo asked, rather liking the idea of not having to scour a mountainside for a tunnel that they only had it on reasonable authority existed at all.

"Um" Ranma offered in reply, fighting for the words for a moment before looking up to Nabiki in silent request for aide.

"That would mean Ryoga leading the way" Nabiki explained, not needing to say how disastrous that could be, they might end up with a tunnel but it was as likely to come out the other side of the mountain as in the chamber they were looking for, or even the same side knowing Ryoga's sense of direction.

"And might wake the toothy one" Ranma offered, hoping to deflect things before Ryoga could take issue, trailing behind the pack for most of the last leg he hadn't seen just how determined the pig boy had become not to rise to things and was just trying to be careful.

He got a round of nods in reply, Ryoga's a little forced as he clenched his jaw and fought not to say something about their lack of faith in his ability. He knew that it was an issue but still didn't quite accept that it was anywhere near as bad as they said it was.

None of which stopped him using the guide string they had strung for him between the camp and the latrine every site they stopped.

"Locate spell?" Nabiki asked, looking towards Gos, who shook his head in return.

"Locate's require names" he explained, hoping they wouldn't ask the details of that because the importance of naming to magic was a subject that was just a but more complex than he wanted to go into

"Do dragons eat?" Ukyo asked, looking up form the pot she had been staring at, the edge of an idea bubbling away in her mind in a very similar manner to the stew.

Ranma immediately looked up to her with a smile, Ryoga a while later and then all eyes were turning to the 'appointed' dragon expert, who was apparently the only one who didn't understand the relevance.

"They don't need to but…" he said, only to be cut off as Ranma gave Ukyo a high five over the pot and Nabiki patted her on the back. "I don't understand?" he said through half gritted teeth, he had rather enjoyed being the person who knew things and unintentionally been lording that knowledge over the others a little, to suddenly have the tables reversed was a rather uncomfortable shock.

One said other folk were clearly enjoying inflicting as none of them even showed the slightest hint of an intention to tell him about it.

"Fine!" he grumbled and stood up to 'go and check on the wagons' or sulk, as it was otherwise known.

"Ever seen a lizard's hole?" interrupted a voice from behind him, and Gos turned to see that it was Ranma who had broken ranks and was now looking at him with the clear intent to explain.

Gos shook his head a little and shrugged.

"Lots of little bones outside them" Ranma offered, holding up his good hand to demonstrate the sizes he was talking about with his thumb and forefinger, "If the dragon eats then…" he said

"There will be bones?" Gos guessed, receiving an encouraging nod in reply.

"Lots of them" Ukyo agreed

"Bigger ones" Ryoga offered. The three of them had spent enough of their lives on the trail that simple tracking techniques like looking for the 'spoil' tips of carnivores seemed fairly obvious to them. The passage itself might be very overgrown but animals tended to avoid dead evidence of their own species so with any luck they might yet find the hole that the dragon itself used.

"Might work?" Nabiki supplied, not voicing her own doubts about how likely that spoil heap was to have survived the scavengers if the dragon hadn't been adding to it for a decade or so of sleep.

"All we got" Ranma agreed, his eyes meeting hers and telling her that he wasn't one hundred percent convinced either.

From there they devolved into organising how exactly they were going to run their search patterns and the other duties that they would need to see to on the morrow. There was a little discussion when Nabiki added hunting up more food as one of the high priorities but one pointed glance towards Gos had quickly reminded the others that they weren't all going back to the lands of instant ramen and that had settled that.

Which turned out to be a rather good thing because had Ukyo not been hunting for food she might not have found the hole at all.

She and Nabiki had been working their way around fairly low on the slopes while Ranma and Gos had been working higher up (or rather Ranma had been working higher up while Gos rested for the trip back down the mountainside), when she had spotted a goodly sized bird of some description loitering on a rock.

The chef had quickly reached for one of her throwing knives and in a fluid motion born of much practice and a desire for some poultry in her stew, let fly.

As it happened the bird got lucky, had independently decided to take flight at just the right time for it to continue to do so ever again. Ukyo had missed and been forced to face Nabiki's deliberately not mocking look, very much not saying things like 'I thought you were good at that' or 'nice throw.'

So the grousing chef had stomped up the hill to retrieve her knife, only to struggle to find it.

"What's up?" Nabiki asked, coming up the hill to join Ukyo, she had rarely seen the chef not able to almost instantly locate the weapons she had thrown and for her to be still searching even after watching the trajectory of the blade was cause for some interest.

"Damn knife must have bounced" Ukyo suggested, waving a hand towards a thorny thicket behind where the bird had been standing. It didn't look like a very friendly thicket at all and there was a lingering scent to it that was even less pleasant.

"So leave it?" Nabiki suggested, able to easily do a cost-benefit analysis of the knife compared to rooting around in anything that smelled quite so much like rotten eggs.

"I like that one" Ukyo had argued, removing her broad bladed weapon from her back and gritting her teeth, it was a lot of extra effort but that knife had been almost flat enough to use properly on the griddle she had put together back at the camp.

Nabiki shrugged and sat down onto the bird's rock, as far as she was concerned it was Ukyo's energy she was wasting and she could use the break. She was the first to admit that even with all the extra exercise she had been put through since she got here she still wasn't up to the standards of endurance that the real wreckers took for granted.

But as it happened it was the right choice for a whole different reason, because no sooner had Ukyo taken the first slashing swing than Nabiki had noticed something odd about the thicket.

A moment later and the mercenary woman was stopping the chef and directing her to swing at it again in a slightly different way. The slice revealed not only that Nabiki had guessed right about the thicket not having any rooting in the mountain to the back of it but also the reason why.

"We found our tunnel!" Nabiki announced happily, also finally adding up what the smell was, "One highway to the sulphurous pit!" she said


	20. The dark road

They had been going to use burning torches to light their way through the tunnel, something that Ryoga apparently had a great deal of familiarity with even if he wasn't actually quite able to explain where the 'deep dark tunnel near Osaka city center' was. But then Nabiki had explained what else might smell like sulphur and exactly how explosive methane could be when lit and they had decided to come up with another plan.

Which is why Ukyo's arms were aching up a treat.

The marching order had been set easily enough, no argument in the slightest that Ranma needed to be at the front, or that Ryoga wasn't going to be, and no argument in the slightest when the lost boy had volunteered to personally carry Akane, he was still the only one who dared get that close to her. Everything else had just been a case of in between the two.

Apart from Ukyo who had been volunteered to hold the ensorcelled, glowing blade that Gos had cast his light spell onto. It might have been a matter of expediency, the Chef being the rational choice as long as they were determined not to blind their frontman with light in front of him and admitting that there was no point in weighing down the others any more than they had to.

By their best guess the mountain tunnel shouldn't take more than a day of travel to negotiate so the party had packed light, only enough gear for that leg and one back for Gos and no waterproofs for the first time since the waste.

They hadn't even bothered with all the weapons that the group had become accustomed to carrying, figuring that the vast majority of them would be slightly less use against a Dragon than they would be against Gojiira himself, so they were actually travelling lighter than they had been since the very first day they had arrived.

All of which had combined with the nearness of home to give the start of the trek a rather lighter feel than any of them had really expected, one or two of them even finding the time for a bit of light banter.

But that had been hours and what felt like a good many miles ago and right now the banter seemed a very long time away indeed.

"I'm fairly sure someone has used this as a torture" Ukyo groused, changing the arm she held the blade in one more time. It wasn't that the blade itself was that heavy, it was more that the constant need to have the light high up meant that Ukyo had spent those hours and miles with at least one of her hands up… all the damn time.

"We could tie it to your shoulder again?" Nabiki suggested, hiding a smirk in the gloom. Some of that banter back at the beginning had been aimed at her relationship with Ranma and even if the allegations had been completely foundless they had rubbed Nabiki a little the wrong way so she wasn't exactly in much of a hurry to help the source of the 'earthier' of those jibes.

"Yeah right" Ukyo replied, not needing to see the smile to know that Nabiki was teasing. They had indeed tried tying the knife to various parts of her but it either was too obscured by her body or ended up shining into her eyes. The time they had tried her shoulder the Chef had bumped her head a few steps later then promptly fallen flat on her ass when she had stumbled in reply.

The tunnel they were travelling down was smooth enough, carved by seemingly natural effects working their way through what had presumably once been a softer rock but the same water flow that had done that was still, despite the growing heat, lingering on the floor making it more than a little treacherous and even ten minutes into the hole all natural light had completely disappeared.

Plus the smell was getting worse.

It probably meant that they were getting closer to the end of the tunnel but that wasn't helping all that much, not when the rotten egg smell had become eye-wateringly strong an hour ago.

Ukyo was about to say something less than particularly kind about where exactly Nabiki could stick something of her own when she caught a handsignal from their pointman.

Much as she had expected Ranma had had few of the slipping troubles that the others had managed and, barring one incident where Ukyo had accidentally splashed him into her earlier, hadn't had anywhere near as much contact with the ground water as the rest of them. What she hadn't expected quite as much however was just how driven their pig tailed leader had become, forcing the pace right up and dragging them along behind him-her almost by will alone.

Like Nabiki she could guess a good chunk of the reason for Ranma's haste, and could empathise with the desire to be away from this place that had hurt so many of the people she cared about, but she had missed the conversation the young man had had with Gos about just how long it took a dragon to wake.

Ranma was hurrying because he knew two things, ancient predators didn't get to be ancient predators by missing the approach of other creatures and any hope of being there while the creature was still asleep was made hugely less likely the longer they gave themselves to make that fatal mistake.

Not that the mistake was inevitable but in his experience it happened anyway, someone always snapped the twig, always ate the wrong food or tried to lean on the wrong lever-outcropping, it was just the way the world worked around people who knew Genma Saotome.

If they were going to have a fight then their odds got a lot better if the beasty below was still waking up rather than sitting there waiting to munch whatever came out of it's food pipe.

But that wasn't why he was pausing the group, and nor was the fact that they had been walking between soot encrusted walls for a good twenty minutes (something he had chosen not to tell anyone else in case they too put narrow passage and 'chimney' together). Instead it was a touch more of a gruesome discovery.

Deliberately he indicated what he had found and then moved on further, making sure that his eyesight wasn't going to be compromised by the light as the others looked at what he had just found, adding only another signalled exhortation towards quiet before he went.

He stopped a few feet further along, trying to put the pieces together himself, the discovery was definitely worth a little thought, because it sure as heck shouldn't have been here.

"It's a samurai" Nabiki whispered, her characteristic voice carrying anyway down the corridor at least as far as Ranma, she had recognised the bits of armour that hadn't burnt off or melted, that and the sword that lay by the man's outstretched hand bones.

"Burnt to a crisp" Ukyo countered with her usual willingness to state the less welcome truths.

"Shhhh" Gos replied, clearly a little more nervous than the rest of them about the rather immediate implications of the soot around the body. To him soot meant fire and the only fire he was expecting down here could only come from one toothy source.

The body was far from recent, the action of the water having accumulated some interesting limestone formations on the uphill side of him, but more to the point he was absolutely the very first person that they had seen wearing anything even remotely like that sort of gear on this side.

Simply put he couldn't have been from this side, which meant all sorts of things that should have been of interest, and would have been had the fact he was scorched balck been preying instead on every mind.

"Cover the light" Ranma ordered, his voice authoritative even though it was said so quietly.

Nabiki of course recognised the tone, it was the same one he had used when planning the attack on the slavers, and every fight before that. This was the Ranma that Cologne would have dearly loved to have married her grand daughter to, the tactician, the calm warrior, the leader. Immediately she moved to do as they had been asked, doing so deliberately before Ukyo could find reason to disagree.

Tired and sore as she was Ukyo's temper had definitely taken a turn for the worse and she had indeed been about to argue before Nabiki clasped the glowing blade between her hands. A few moments later she was also about to break the silence and demand to know what exactly the need had been.

Then she too saw the light up ahead. At this distance it wasn't very bright, more just an easing of the unrelenting darkness, a dim greyness where there should have only been darkest black, but it was light anyway, with all the implications of that, and suddenly her heart was beating fast and loud enough to outrace any tycho drum.

She swallowed hard and waited for their leader to give another order.

"Leave the light" Ranma said, "and anything else we don't need" he added, returning to the group to whisper the plan his remarkably adaptive mind had come up with. "It's time to do it" he insisted.

Quietly the others moved to obey, lowering the waterskins and packs they had brought, dropping the contingency gear they had brought in case the way had become treacherous and silently using the time to steel themselves for what they knew they must see ahead.

Meanwhile Ranma looked once more on the dead samurai and offered a silent prayer for the man's soul, there could be little chance the man had known any of the reasons that had brought him to his death in this dark hole so very far away from the land of his birth.

On impulse he reached down and picked up the sword that had finalised the impression of the man's identity, very surprised indeed to find it still even partly intact after all this time.

According to Shinto and the budo taking that home for the man would at least offer some compensation to the man's lost spirit and all of a sudden Ranma was feeling an odd kinship with the long dead warrior.

AS he did take the weapon his hand dipped into a pool of water that had collected behind it and been warmed by the unearthly heat rising from below, suddenly Ranma was a he again and was absolutely sure he had made the right call. He lashed the weapon to his back with a pair of simple leather ties and turned back to his watch down the tunnel.

Soon after that the group were ready once more and Ranma was once more leading them down the dark corridor towards the date with destiny that awaited them at the bottom.

The glow gradually resolved itself into a deep red hue, echoing the increasing warmth that was accompanying their downward progression. A heat that soon had them sweating hard in even the relatively light clothing they had chosen to come down here in.

Then they heard the echoes of the muted roar of something else, something none of them had heard before outside of documentaries. Unsurprisingly it was Nabiki who put the pieces together first and made the only logical deduction left to them.

"Lava" she whispered, her voice carrying to the entire group, "we're in a volcano" she insisted. It explained all sorts of things, from the smells to the tube they were walking down, it also made a dreadful sort of sense considering the nature of the beast they were coming to see.

But it didn't make anyone any more comfortable.

It was only a matter of a few more minutes before they got their confirmation and they knew for certain that Nabiki had been right. The group came to the end of the tunnel and finally found what had presumably once been the great caldera of the magma chamber.

That was some great time ago of course, presumably even before the beast had moved in. Lit by twin streams of lava that ran across the floor and the rippling glow of another unseen source that they had to pray was the gate now it was instead a vast cathedral to the new occupant, the beast they had come to dare the wrath of, the dragon itself.

Even with the vastness of the chamber there was no missing it, easily two hundred meters long not including it's coiled tail the creature was a monument to dark fears and myths made flesh. Every inch of it's gargantuan body was covered in dark scarlet lit scales any one of which was taller than any of the Nerimans. Its wings were folded to it's body, their tips however still evident, darker still against the lava lit scales. At the end of each of it's limbs were vast paws, claw tipped and lethal looking even without the vast power and weight that would be behind them. But most fearsome of all was it's head, a truncated triangle of horn, tooth and interplayed muscle, and one which was made all the worse by the eyes, the wide open, malignant staring eyes each one of which reflected the lava as if it were the flames of hell itself.

"Fu-" Ukyo began, but she never finished the thought, no swear word enough to eve come close to the bowel loosening fear that was suddenly all her universe.

"uh" was about all that Gos managed, his own bowel control not even up to the chef's standard and a new warmth already making its way down his leg.

"It's not fully awake" Ranma asserted, of all of them he had gotten the most time to acclimatise t the beast, appeared to be the one best coping with the sight they had discovered. He had spotted the way that the sinister pupils in the eyes were yet to actually react to even the occasional flares of light from the bubbling lava streams, had noticed the way that even though those orbs were definitely fixed in this direction they didn't quite appear focused yet.

And besides he was still not flame-grilled so there had to be some reason.

"We go quickly" he asserted, raising his hand to point to a narrow path down the side of the bowl towards the great stone floor below. "Ukyo leads" he insisted, his hand continuing to describe a path towards the glow that the beast's body obscured the light of. "You stop for nothing" he insisted and nobody needed to guess what, or who he meant.

Nabiki had known this moment would come, had prepared herself for it, long hours spent trying to think up an argument why he shouldn't be the one to hold it's attention while the rest of them tried the gate. In the end though she had been forced to concede the point, there was simply no way Saotome Ranma was going to let even the people who had wronged him most in this life take this responsibility from him.

Ranma would hold the dragon until they were all safe, even if it cost him his life, and there wasn't a word she could say to stop him.

So instead she tried to give him a reason not to linger, there on the ledge above the scariest thing she had ever seen in her entire life Nabiki took Ranma into her hands and kissed him, told him in deed all the things there were no words for, of how grateful she was for his strength and his caring, of how much she respected and relied on his honour, of the growing feelings she had for him, of how those feelings were most definitely not of a sister to a brother, of the future they might have, of the wonderful things they might explore together… if only he made it through that gate after them.

"Wow" Gos offered, his eyes wide and his mind spinning just from seeing that kiss. Ukyo said nothing but she did quietly admit to herself that whether he knew it or not Ranma was well and truly claimed once more. Ryoga saw it and didn't understand, all he knew was that he and Akane had been let off at least one hook by that kiss.

Ranma didn't even manage the 'wow.'

By the time he had come to his senses again the rest of the party were already most of the way down the slope and were nearly to the cavern floor, abandoning stealth to instead make the most of the time they had.

Ranma leapt from the ledge and all but flew to the floor below, summoning up his warrior spirit to shroud him and seeking that single purpose of mind that was the mark of a true warrior.

His feet touched stone, the air still whipping about him as it was disturbed by his passage, his pigtail settling about his shoulders, his travelworn and sweat marked clothes cast dark and scarlet by the fires ahead of him. His own eyes locked on those of the dragon and both knew without a shadow of a doubt there would be a fight today, and one like they hadn't ever known.

As Ranma coalesced his aura into the first of his assaults, gathering the confident blue light between his hands he saw the dust shifting from the beast's great form, finally shaken off after all these years of slumber. He could see the way that same dust gathered towards it's pinching nostrils and knew it was gathering its breath for the fire that made it's most feared attack.

Briefly he thought of seeking the soul of ice, of trying to combat the fire with the cold of his spirit but the idea was discarded almost as soon as it occurred, there simply was no comparison, any attempt to try that from his own reserves would be not only his doom but also utterly pointless, a pebble thrown to the great ocean.

As the others fled hell for leather across the chamber neither combatant made any sign of noticing them, both knew where the real danger was and neither had the focus to spare on irrelevancies.

With a great cry that came literally from his soul Ranma let fly the ball of ki he had been gathering, flinging it with all the force he could muster right at the redlit eye of the waking beast. Unlike the rounded comets he had so regularly used in Nerima this bolt travelled faster and flew sharper, a spearhead aimed at evening the odds perhaps just a little.

The beast's head pulled up with agonising slowness, it's great heart straining to provide the blood to the long dormant muscles that it now required obedience from. With the resolute force of a glacier and the gathering speed of a landslide it's neck turned, it's eyelid moved to blink shut and it's legs strained to shift it's bulk.

It almost managed, the eyelid nearly closing the head nearly ducking aside, had it not been so colossal, had the bolt not been moving so fast then perhaps it might have succeeded but it was that big and Ranma had not held back.

With a roar of agony that hadn't been heard in millennia the beast expressed a pain and surprise that defied human understanding, blasting it's hate out in a vast conflagration even as it's draconic mind struggled to understand the damage that had been done to it.

By which point Ranma was already running, his legs straining hard enough to throw even stonechips up behind him and his whole body bent to the task of getting him clear of where he had been.

His feet left the floor, his knees still pistoning as he bounded off the wall and propelled himself still higher while desperately his lungs sucked in all the precious air he could get.

The dragon's breath swept over the uneven floor, blasting it with a heat to rival suns, simultaneously smoothing and cooking it, shattering the smaller stones and melting others. It sucked the oxygen from the air and whipped the whole expanse of the chamber into a typhoon fury.

Ranma, an undisputed master of aerial combat, needed every technique in his possession to keep himself aloft, buoyed up on the vast shockwave updraft and not down amongst the fiery death below.

He twisted, he tumbled, his arms spread wide and his spine craned to make the very most of his skills..

And he came down, right through the very end of the fire and down a crouched landing onto dimming red rocks below, his feet and one hand connecting at the same time.

Suddenly he leapt back up again, hopping from one smoking foot to another while frantically waving his left hand and shouting, "Hot hot hot!"

The dragon could hardly believe it's eye, could hardly think because of it's pain and it's rage, in all the millennia of it's existence it had never known anything like this, no biped had ever survived it's fire, demigods and divinely inspired they ahd all burnt to a crisp under the heat of it's malice. Yet here was a simple human apparently unharmed by even that blast.

It's rage only became worse, it's fury an almost physical thing as it flooded it's muscles with blood once more and hurled itself at the anomaly before it.

"Shoot" Ranma offered when his good eye spotted the incoming creature and registered the renewed danger.

Ignoring the pain and the heat he turned towards the beast and took three long powerful strides, what was left of his shoes falling to pieces under the renewed stress, falling unheeded behind him as he once more hurled himself into the air, this time towards the great beast itself.

It was another gamble, much as the last leap had been, a hope that the creature, old as it was, wise as it was, magical as it indisputably was, would not yet be used to the effects of one sided vision.

From his own experience he knew it wasn't just a question of not seeing to one side of yourself, it was more than that, your body needed two eyes to judge distance correctly, a lot of your hand eye co-ordination (or jaw-eye) was based on the difference between what one saw and the other.

So as he tumbled he didn't deliberately dodge to the wounded side, he just concentrated on moving as fast as he could, making himself the most difficult target he could be for the wounded beast.

He had no way of knowing that after the flame his friends had paused had, despite all their instincts, tuned to look for the disposition of the man that was even now buying them the time they needed to flee. He had no way of knowing the relief that had crossed every face at seeing him alive in the wake of the fire or how heartfelt that was from one set of eyes. Most of all though he had no way of seeing how that relief turned to horror as he appeared to leap right at the mouth of the beast that so defined danger to them.

Through the whipping rush of air and the roar of the dragon's hatred Ranma never heard the scream that escaped Nabiki's throat but the more sensitive Dragon did and perhaps it was that that saved Ranma's life.

On anther day the dragon would have ignored that cry completely, concentrated wholly on the danger before it but this day the dragon had already had it's universe redefined to a cry not so very unlike the one that it just heard from out of it's line of vision.

Reflexively it closed it's good eye and bunched the muscles in it's neck in unconscious expectation of more pain. None of which stopped it snapping it's great toothed jaws shut on what should have been the yielding flesh of the fool that had challenged it in the air.

Instead the teeth closed only on themselves and by the time the dragon's good eye had opened again it had already felt the unfamiliar touch of a human foot, right on it's snout.

Ranma had evaded those jaws by a hair's breadth, had turned and twirled once more and finally managed to swing his body the way it needed to go, his right leg lashing out and connecting just hard enough to redirect his force and correct his fall.

Ranma sailed past the Dragon's vision, already gathering another great bolt of energy into his hands and once more it's concentration faltered.

Simply put this couldn't be, there was no way any being, even another dragon, should still be alive, let alone fighting, it was the oldest of it's kind, the greatest and most powerful. By force of will alone it had lasted millennia, had made the mountain move around it and changed the course of the heated flows in the world itself. It had destroyed countless enemies, countless rivals and even a few mates, but it had never known gall like this.

All of which rather distracted it from the fact it was flying through the air in an enclosed space.

As Ranma's blast splashed almost harmlessly into the joint of one wing and his attention was turned to his own landing the dragon fluffed its.

The normally graceful behemoth crashed into the baked stone floor in a tangle of long neck, limbs and wings, it's tail slapping down almost derisively behind it as it made a mistake it hadn't made since the day it fled it's birthing chamber.

Bones stronger than steel flexed, muscles built like corded cable stretched and a horn made of substance unique in the universe snapped raggedly through, sending fresh waves of unaccustomed pain through the great beast that owned it.

In fairness Ranma's landing wasn't much better, the place he would have naturally fallen to being rather occupied by the flow of one of those magma streams and the other options being somewhat limited.

He had had a few heartbeats to curse his luck and wonder what exactly he had done to deserve it before his entire focus was once more required to avert disaster and oce again his every skill and talent was being called on to twist himself out of the trajectory he had been in.

Once more that focus robbed him of the opportunity to see the state of his friends, those same friends that had heartsore turned away to run once more for the gate when they had thought him snapped up and only turned about once more as the echo of his ki-projection cry had burst about the room. Those same friends who had watched in renewed horror as he had seemed destined to fall right into the magma flow and drawn a ragged breath of renewed hope as he had averted that disaster too.

Nabiki and the others were nearly there. As the great dragon had moved it had revealed the glittering coolly reflective surface of the Gate between Worlds. They had run towards it's stone girded surface with every ounce of strength they had in them, only partly aware of the enchantment that Gos was weaving about them to make that ounce go further still, and they had almost made it.

This time as they turned Ukyo was already on the bottom step of the short ornate flight that led up to the arch topped portal, her breathing ragged by genuine hope shining in her heart. Now she, like the others was torn, they knew that there was no way even Ranma was going to pull this landing off right, it was from too high, too fast and he had had to spend too much effort tuning to avoid the fireflow. Almost as once they winced as he and the dragon crashed down.

Suddenly they had to make a choice, did they do as they had been instructed and flee through the gate, escape to what they had to believe was the safety of their own world, or did they abandon that and go back for the man that had made that possible. They were not good choices and they were made worse when the more observant of them saw the sudden wrench that Ranma's leg went through as he landed.

With the sound of the lava and the echoing crash of the dragon's landing they couldn't hear the pop of the joint dislocating but they could see the way the habitually obscenely graceful Ranma cascaded to the floor, his arms flying to his abused limb as he bounced and bounced again, curling reflexively into a tight ball.

"I'm going back for him" Ukyo said, "Get the others through the-" she was cut off as Ryoga's fist lashed out and ended her argument. Immediately afterwards Nabiki found her arms full of sister and her vision full of the sight of Ryoga picking the dazed Ukyo up and throwing her for the gate.

"RUN!" he ordered and at last she as able to move again, hurling herself up the steps even as the tears burned hot against her cheeks.

There was simply nothing she could do, she wasn't fast enough, strong enough to help Ranma now, that was something that only his closest rival had the skill for, all she could do was obey and pray that it worked out alright.

In the reflecting surface of the portal she saw Gos make the decision himself, there was no way he was going to make it back across that room and even a magic poor cripple was better than a flame baked corpse, he took to the steps with a vigour that surprised even him. Meanwhile Ryoga was turning away towards their fallen friend and in the background the great dragon was lurching and rolling as it bellowed it's agony to shake the room itself.

Then the sudden icy cool of the gate hit her, an indescribable contrast to the burning heat of the room beyond and suddenly everything stopped making sense, there was no up, no down and nothing else as she fell through the trans-material hole that the Gate was, her sister still clutched to her chest.

Meanwhile behind her, in that hell hot room Ranma had seen his triumph, had seen the win he had been fighting for, through the pain of his hip, the mist in his good eye and the spinning of his head he had seen. Little did he realise how little of that daze was due to his vision and how much of it was due to the room itself reacting to the strength of the dragon's hate.

Nor did he see the man who had first sworn to kill him racing across the suddenly tossing ground towards his fallen form, or the cold hard determination on that man's face to not fail this one time, to pay back some of the times that this fallen friend had given his all that others might live brighter lives than even his own, to perhaps expiate some of his own wrongdoing with the woman that the fallen man had once upon a time wrongly given his heart to.

The ground shook, the mountain itself quaked and the magma that was it's heart's blood lurched from its regimented paths and exploded across the room.

Ranma rolled to try and sit, to try and look his enemy in the eye, one last time, and instead saw his death coming right for him.

It was what a vulcanologist might have called a 'bomblet', what others would have called a 'fiery ball of volcanic death', and it, along with a hundred others, had hurled itself from it's flow-bed into the air, the difference with this one was that it was now headed right for the place where Ranma was still trying to shake his head clear, force his body to obey the commands he was giving it.

Heartbeat by racing heartbeat it moved closer, trailing fire, and still Ranma's body refused to move.


	21. Homecoming

The transit between the worlds was every bit as stomach churning the first time, it was not however quite as unexpected or anything near as much of a wrench, all of which meant that Nabiki got to experience the wonder of the passage, the instant bone chilling cold, the complete out of body experience, the rush of a universe as it passed through her, and the acute awareness of the vast nothingness that she was passing through.

It wasn't dark there, dark would require some degree of light to perceive, and it wasn't just empty, emptiness implied there was some form of container. Instead it was Void, matchless emptiness that defied rational comprehension; as if to even try to understand the nature of such was to connect to it's lifeless non-existence.

Needless to say that Nabiki's first thought, as she tumbled to the hard stone floor the other side of the gate, was one of acute relief, to be whole once more and surrounded by the amazing complexity of an existence her senses could rationalise. From the scents of musty gloom that suddenly replaced the cavern's sulphur and brimstone to the far away drone of traffic, from the graffiti on the walls to the defaced icons on what had once been an altar everything was suddenly much more familiar and instinctively, desperately she clung to the idea that they were home.

Her second thought however was less welcome; cold fear gripping her gut and replacing that moment of euphoria, she had turned about to look for those friends who were not with her, who were not currently sprawled out on these darkened stone pavings, and instead she found herself looking back into the gate and through it.

This side it was no less alien than it had been the other, a rippling disturbance in the material that made up the universe she knew. It was the same ten feet or so high and the same eight wide, but it only seemed to have depth when looked at straight on. In this case it was girded around by no archway but instead seemed to hang in empty air, a distinctly two-dimensional slice in a three dimensional world.

Nabiki quickly recognised that her mind was deliberately seeking out things to notice other than what she had turned to look for, her perceptions procrastinating so that she wouldn't have to face the truth she already feared deep in her guts, that it would already be over for those not already with her.

Instead she bore witness to what might have been Ryoga's greatest moment. With ice clamping around her heart Nabiki had quickly spotted the magma heading for her Ranma, had quickly taken in just how out of it the master martial artist was, and how little chance even he had of pulling another one out of his sleeve.

For a dreadful moment she had thought it was going to be the very last sight of him, buried and burned so many millions of miles away from where she was.

Then Ryoga stepped in, his unmistakable fighter's form suddenly interposing itself between Ranma and the magma, his rush turning into a stance. She watched as the young man with the fangs planted his feet and turned to face the approaching death, she watched as that the light from that same chunk of hell painted the pig boy in scarlet and shadow and saw him thrust out his hand, paired fingers first, towards the onrushing comet.

From here she couldn't hear the cry that tore from his throat but she had heard it enough time anyway to know exactly the words spoken. Her heart seemed to stop entirely, the world slow to a terrible crawl as the lost boy attempted to use his breaking point on two tons of molten rock.

Nabiki had no way of knowing how difficult such a feat was, how much the finding of a breaking point relied on instinctive knowledges of stone and rock, and how much relied on being able to perfectly see the target. She had no way of knowing that even a most experienced matriarch of the Joketsu would have balked at the idea of what Ryoga was proposing to do, even without the corona of fire that shrouded the superheated stone now plunging irrevocably towards the two young men.

Nor did she doubt her friend, or his ability to once more do the impossible, this was no time to fail him as he was not failing them, but none of that stopped the water gathering in her eyes

The explosion was immense, the ki fuelled shattering of that bomblet casting it to pieces which in turn scattered about the point of impact like some terrible rocket explosion into a firelit dawn, soul energy warring with the bonds tat held the universe together.

But Nabiki's eyes were not on the pyrotechnics, not watching the starkly beautiful cascade of fire that the shattering created, they were instead upon the figures haloed in the centre of the conflagration.

With eyes already tearing, eyes that so desperately wanted to turn away but remained locked to the horrid scene. Later in her dreams she would vividly remember the way Ryoga's fingers were blackening even before the rock arrived, she would darkly recall the way his clothes lit up with that brilliant yellow flame, his bandana and the hair beneath it combining to turn him into some macabre candle.

Her gorge rose as she saw his skin seem to peel away, his flesh seem to run and the whole lot steadily turn blacker than the night itself.

She screamed as the force of the impact drove the valiant young man from his stance and threw him back, to the very feet of the man he had just saved, the nerves in his body still making the ruins of his form twitch even though the life had to have fled, as the tears that had been threatening became a reality she finally closed her eyes, unable to continue to watch the tumultuous shifts in fate beyond that gate.

Through the haze of pain, the dizziness of his concussion and the blur in his eyes Ranma had seen it all, had fought to understand and appreciate what had just happened and what it meant.

Unlike Nabiki he did know how difficult that feat had been, unlike Nabiki he had known from the very moment that Ryoga took his stance that the Lost boy had to know how his attempt would end. There simply had been no way for Ryoga to walk away from that one.

Yet he had chosen to do it anyway, to stand between Ranma and death, even though it cost him his own life.

The idea cut through the pig tailed warrior, threw away any hints of the concussion or that calm acceptance of fate that had so recently held him. And in it's place was a cold, implacable focus.

With the deceptive speed of a glacial avalanche Ranma flowed to his feet and stamped one leg back into use. With the storm of his remaining eye suddenly still and icy Ranma looked first to the recovering dragon and then to the friend who had proven himself once and for all, who had literally taken a stand where no other dared. And in the burned eyes of a dying comrade Ranma found his answer.

Since the moment he had heard of the dragon Ranma had been looking for a way to beat it, wracking his brain for a solution to the problem that was this paragon of predators. He hadn't found one. Until now.

The whole chamber resounded to the hatred of the dragon, vibrating in sympathy to it's fiery rage, roaring along with the beast that had made this place it's home.

The biggest problem had always been the magic, it was something that Ranma didn't understand, and never could, his mind just wasn't made that way. Basically whatever technique Ranma threw at the great beast would either be negated by it's size or it's own draconic power. To even hurt it he had been forced to do the impossible, to beat it he would have to do the unthinkable.

As the dragon gathered itself to it's clawed feet and hurled itself back towards this agent of agony that had invaded it's lair it wasn't thinking about the comparative difference in size, it wasn't thinking about the small victory it had just won by killing the creature's friend and it wasn't thinking about how all these things had come to pass. Instead it and it's power had become one thing, a physical embodiment of draconic anger. It would utterly destroy this thing, would annihilate it from the face of the universe and remove every trace of it from existence.

It was not thinking of half measures and the time for using them in reply was passed.

In the years since Nerima Ranma had not been idle, not been further wasting his time, his knowledge of his calling had only increased, and more than that his knowledge of the underpinning principles had finally started to flesh out.

The amazon techniques were shortcuts, were methods of teaching tricks that reflected greater skills, they were simplifications of deeper principles, ones that were nevertheless amazing in their own rights but perhaps most useful to the true martial artist only as guidelines to the greater truths.

The Soul of ice was an attempt to do the impossible, to let a fighter become one with the emptiness that diametrically opposed the living energy of flaring ki, it was an attempt to let a warrior touch the void and survive intact.

In the dying light of Ryoga's eyes Ranma had seen that void, in the rippling surface of the gate he had sensed it, and in the towering power of Draconic rage he had almost found it's complete opposite.

Beyond the gate Nabiki, through re-opened still tearing eyes, saw the change in Ranma, saw the hard focus and saw the sudden resolution, a part of her was suddenly more afraid now than ever before.

She watched as Ranma crouched and seemed to draw something up from his friend, she watched as he turned, beginning some deliberate pattern on the rolling cavern floor and she saw as he turned to look at the gate.

Across the incomprehensible distance their eyes met and a small part of Nabiki understood, and mourned for what Ranma must do. She watched as he threw out his arm and the gathered energy with it. She watched as he built a bridge between himself and that soulless nothingness. With her heart in her mouth she saw him trail that energy like some vital gymnastic ribbon, teasing on the nothingness behind it.

She saw the shadow of the dragon's power sweep over Ranma like a hellborn wind and she saw Ranma slowly turn back to the creature that had taken so much from him. The touch of the Void became an Embrace and then a Blade, a hard edged projection of absolute non-existence that no power could meet unscathed.

She didn't hear the words, didn't need to know them, on some deep level she understood their meaning without. And she saw their effects.

The trailing vortex of the Void caught up with Ranma at the same time as the fiery blaze of the Dragon's wrath and the two met with an indescribable force. Light blazed, nothingness roiled, heat flared and icy vacuum absorbed, the air split and two pillars of the universe warred.

"Ranma" she whispered, completely unaware that two other voices joined her in her prayer. The gate, in all it's ancient power, in all it's unfathomable complexity rippled and rocked but that was nothing compared to the destruction wrought beyond.

At the very eye of the storm Ranma existed in an endless moment, suspended perfectly between the forces of creation and entropy, watching the clash through blazing eyes, thinking only of holding the power in place and finishing what he had started.

It finished with thunder, with a tumultuous crash that split the air and the mountain itself. It finished with fire and ice, and it finished with utter destruction. All that was great about the dragon, all that was mystical and all that was so much more than mortal ended in that crash, was utterly annihilated, banished from the world and from existence.

The rest just spread all over the walls.

"Ewww" Ukyo offered, wincing at the veritable cloud of gore that suddenly expanded out from where the great Dragon had once been, feeling her stomach rebel at the nearly recognisable chunks of innards that had once been the proudest of beasts.

But, as with the others by her side, the gore was soon cast from her mind; because there, at the very epicentre of the cataclysm, stood a single figure, his pigtail settling about him even as the scarlet rain showered down over his slightly smoking form.

"Ranma" she heard Nabiki breathe again, and with it a tingle ran up through every inch of the chef's body. This was the truth of the man she had once loved with all her heart, the man who when faced with the utterly devastating would somehow find a way to be the last man standing, the man who had defied a force of nature and was living to tell the tale.

"And Ryoga" Gos added, his voice rasping from deep emotion. Coming back to this side had brought a renewal of the pain and handicap that had dogged his every recent day before the transfer. With that had come the darker emotions that had filled so very much of his young life, that same sense of hopelessness and protective cynicism, as they had watched the pig tailed warrior had reached down and picked up the blackened form of the other hero, had gently cradled the ruined remains to his chest and looked to them once more, "what's left of him" Gos corrected.

The scale of what they witnessed was still running through their minds, resounding in their hearts as they fought to make sense of it all, amidst all the other issues resurging in his life it was all Gos could do to translate even those thoughts to words.

"Bugger that!" Ukyo offered, referring to the same awe that seemed to be gripping them all rather than their fallen friend. "RUN!!" she hollered at the top of her voice.

Alone of them she seemed to still be aware of the nature of the place Ranma stood in, alone of them she remembered the true existence of that mountain and apparently alone she had connected the dots of the death of the Dragon with what was likely to happen now.

But the others were not far behind and soon all of them were shouting, waving, gesticulating, calling on their friend with all their heart and soul even if their voices could not be heard.

Ranma looked up and through the distance he understood, moments later, as the Volcano began it's passage back to life, he was running, his great powerful bounds tearing up the space between him and the gate.

"Faster you prat" Nabiki offered, the others had fallen silent now, and even her own voice was little above a whisper. Gos crossed his fingers, Nabiki found her hand suddenly clenched into Ukyo's and the three of them held their breaths as one.

Lava churned, a mountain shook, quakes split the rock, fire leapt high again and through it all one man ran for all he was worth, his renewed desire to live not countenancing any failure right now.

His friends watched as a lava flow washed away the bottom of the steps, they watched as their friend seemed to once more ignore small matters like gravity and injuries that should have been debilitating and leap through the heat hazed air to dive headfirst into the rippling surface of the gate, his precious burden still clutched to his chest.

They saw as for that inestimable moment he was held between the two realities, neither here nor there nor truly in between either. Then they finally saw him crash down into the darkened room they occupied, roll across the floor and back to his bared feet.

With him came the acidic stench of that doomed chamber, the trailing hint of ozone and the overwhelming, hideous smell of burnt flesh, the first two rising from him, the third from the carbonised form his rolling had deposited onto the floor.

For two precious moments there was only silence, the young man, who had defied every rule the onlookers knew, standing there despite all the evidence to the contrary, despite all their fears and despite all the odds, albeit he was smoking a bit.

Behind him the once rippling portal went dark and still.

"Hi guys" he offered with a smile that said that the evidence was once more taking a backseat and that once more all was just fine with a world lucky enough to have Saotome Ranma in it.

Later Nabiki would have cause to remember that there had been something not quite complete about that smile, somewhat different from the ones she had known, but for the moment she didn't care.

She didn't feel herself run to him, didn't notice the distance disappear and didn't care. Instead she wrapped him into her arms a hugged him as a drowning man might a liferaft. A moment later Ukyo was there too, also redefining the word 'glomp,' and behind her Gos waved a congratulatory hand from his place on the floor.

"That was amazing" he offered.

"I can't believe it" said another voice "we won!"

"You're alive!" one of them offered, but Ranma wasn't listening, and even the fantastic feeling of those congratulations was being pushed into the background because he was instead looking right at the form he had left behind as he had rolled, and the form curled up near it that was what his first fiancée had become.

The confident phrase they were all expecting didn't come, the elation started to bleed away already. Gradually the others noticed the hole that the lack of that boast had left, and noticed the direction of Ranma's gaze.

Other things started to sink in too. They were home, back to the world of their birth and all else that they had known all their young lives. The evidence was all around them, even the tacky logos on the discarded wrappers and rubbish that littered the corners of this dark place proclaimed it; they had left **that** world behind them and were free again.

"I'm alive" Ranma whispered, and the wind itself seemed to supply the rest of the sentence. The pig tailed hero's heart might still be beating but others weren't, and as their eyes slowly looked back away from the remains of their late friend, and back to the faces of their living ones it was easy to see that each and every one of them had paid a price, one they would need a miracle to ever set right again.

"Hold on" Gos said quietly, his eyes crossing as he concentrated so very hard.

Ranma and Ukyo looked at him hard, trying to work out what exactly he was getting at, but the hardest glare was coming from Nabiki who was starting to feel the same thing that he was.

Ever since they had come back to this side a nagging sensation that both of the magically gifted youngsters had felt on the other side had been changing from a whisper to a shout.

"Something's not right" Gos supplied, closing his eyes over as he tried to force his thoughts to collect and steady from the rollercoaster ride they had just been on.

"What?" asked Ranma, a dread feeling settling into his chilling heart. All sorts of horrid scenarios ran through his mind, things about this being some trick of the dragon's, an illusion to test their intentions, things like this not being their world, and things like this not

"Nothing like that" Nabiki said, closing her own eyes as she duplicated the once more maimed man's expression of concentration. Their magic might be gone, and with it that coiled power but there was something else gone with it, something that they had been aware of yet not aware of all this time.

"The ASSHOLE!" Nabiki offered, just as the other two were starting to fidget once more, finally the thoughts that had been lingering, the nagging feelings had coalesced into the idea that had been missing.

It had been there all along, but something, or someone, had not been allowing her to realise it. "Deighton!" she growled and a moment later Gos's cry of fury joined in.

And the pair of them had a lot of fury to chuck about, their already wound up emotions easily converting the joy of their release and the despair of their losses into hot anger as they realised that all this time someone hadn't been playing fair.

"What?" Ranma asked, looking around in case the man in question was here, even though he had no idea at all what he looked like.

"Ranma" Nabiki asked, her voice an angry saw, rage in every syllable, "would you say I was an ignorant person?" she asked and the room fell silent to look at them, Ukyo being suddenly very glad that Nabiki was asking Ranma and not her.

"Hell no" Ranma replied, getting the right answer for once, even straight off the cuff, "you're the smartest person I know" he added, still not sure where this was going but sensing this wasn't the time to ask.

"Then do you want to tell me why I fixated on the Gate?" she asked, "why we never even considered other options?" she added, "why I didn't even stop to see if there was some profit to be made coming back through?" she asked.

Ranma shook his head, suddenly wondering why as well. Nabiki had grown up a lot too but she was still the sort of person that might stop halfway through her own funeral to make a little extra money should the opportunity be there. For her not to have the entire time they were on the other side….

"Why, despite all we were told about the Healing hand I never once considered taking my sister there?" she growled, "Or taking you there?" she said and by now even the magically inept Ranma was starting to suspect the answer.

"Deighton pissed with our minds!" Ukyo growled, and Gos growled an affirmative reply back.

"Probably while we were passed out the other side" Gos insisted, "before we were able to sense it." All the way through that trip he had known there was something amiss, had known there was something not quite right, but something had forced him to dismiss it, to ignore that feeling. And there was only one person whose adgenda made that likely.

"All of it was his fault!" Gos fumed, "all of it!" he said, while inside there was still a little voice asking if that was true. The rage was only nearly overshadowing the quiet insecurity that asked whether he too hadn't had something to do with this, wether how much he had wanted that hadn't been a key part.

"I'll kill him" Ukyo growled, already envisaging a slow blunt force future for the man who had been even more responsible for this than they thought he had, "painfully" she asserted in a tone that left absolutely no doubt as to her sincerity.

"No" interrupted a cold hard voice, "you won't" it insisted and all eyes turned towards the speaker, more than one set full of fury ready to argue just how right that killing would be.

To their surprise it was from Ranma's mouth those words had come, and to their surprise his face had slipped back into that grim fighting mask he wore before his more treacherous battles. "Not until he's fixed this" Ranma insisted, nodding towards the prostrate Akane and even stiller Ryoga.

"Fixed this?" Ukyo asked, her anger not letting go that quickly.

"You heard them" Ranma offered, not being specific about who 'they' were, but not really caring, inside his anger was a cold hard lance and explanations could wait.

He turned on his heel and stalked towards the boarded up door that blocked this forgotten cellar from the outside world. "Bring Ryoga and help Gos" he ordered

"What do you mean!" growled Ukyo, falling back on her own anger to make sense of a universe suddenly moving without her.

"There's magic the other side" Nabiki said, a cold weight settling into her own heart, "magic enough to undo some of the damage" she said, turning away and heading for Gos to help him as Ranma had ordered. "We're going back" she said, shattering all the dreams of home because she could do no less for the people who had already done so much for her.

"Oh hell" Ukyo offered, and she was right.


	22. Dark Knight

The car journey was later remembered mostly for being cold, they had tried closing the windows but the overpowering acidic stench of the blackened form in the boot had quickly put paid to that idea. Even with every window wound down and the fans on there seemed to be no real escape from the nauseating reminder of the fate of their friend.

Stealing a car to get them where they needed to be had been a simple decision, they didn't have enough roof hoppers to carry all the people they needed to carry and they certainly couldn't afford the attention while accompanied by the burnt remains of one youth and the catatonic form of another.

There had however been a little debate over who was going to drive, the first suggestion having been Ranma until Nabiki reminded them that the only way he knew how to drive was 'Martial arts combat driving' and they really didn't need that kind of heat either.

So instead it was Ukyo at the wheel, with Gos beside her giving directions and the others in the back wearing very different expressions as they contemplated what they were about to do.

For Ranma that meant nursing a compressed rage that was being carefully honed to the point he would need for when he confronted the man directly responsible for the deaths of two of his friends and the very real loss of the woman who he had once upon a time loved with all his heart.

Nabiki on the other hand was already planning way beyond that, taking the beating of the man who tricked them as read and already working the angles for what that would mean for the rest of them. There were some very harsh decisions to be made and precious little time to make them in.

"We're going back?" Ukyo asked, finally voicing the concern that had been burning in her mind since the issue had been raised. Here, on this side, the terrible things that had happened to her seemed much further away, it almost seemed like they had happened to someone else. Riding on that unexpected high she was less than keen to return to face her demons through any gates.

"I am" Ranma supplied, his voice a hard steel with only the traces of anger there to separate it from the one they knew from his time using the Soul of Ice technique. "It's Ryoga's only hope" he supplied grimly.

"And Akane's" Nabiki added, finally admitting that this side's medicine was at best a slim hope for a woman in Akane's current state. It would undoubtedly involve some fairly extreme methods, electro shock being one of the milder ones, and even then complete catatonia was rarely cured. There wouldn't be much of their Akane left afterwards.

Gos didn't add that it was his too, the elation of being still alive having rapidly faded as he had once more been confronted with the realities of living in his crippled frame. Steadily the memories of his life here were coming back to him and he knew that there was no way he could face that again, especially after once more tasting the freedoms of an able body.

In the driver's seat Ukyo swallowed and nodded. There really was no arguing with that sort of logic and no way she could back out now. Ranma might be deliberately not speaking for anyone else, deliberately not forcing anyone to go along with his personal determination, but he didn't need to. Each and every one of them, by family or lifestyle, was part of the same tradition, and not one of them would desert their fellows now.

No matter how much it would cost them.

"Maybe Konatsu too?" Ukyo added, her voice small and nearly lost into the whipping of the wind as they sped through the streets of the city they had once called home. After even this small time away though everything did look different, the neon lights and tightly packed housing somehow intensely oppressive after the wide open spaces they had ranged across; the sheer number of people hurrying about their night-time activities somehow alien to the people that had found Pathadaway large despite the fact it would have disappeared into just one of Tokyo's wards.

The smells, car-fumes and habitual pollutions that had become part of everyday life in this more civilised reality were suddenly seeming very alien indeed, much like the noises.

Of course it wasn't as simple as that and Nabiki at least recognised that a good bit of the disjointed feeling they were getting was likely to be delayed shock, a similar effect to what was referred to as post-traumatic stress. One of the key indicators of it was a feeling of being separated from and incompatible with the life you had known before the events.

She was seeing it in the way her friends were looking about at the world beyond the windows and in the way she herself had been hearing the sounds of sirens in the distance as if for the first time. She knew that it wasn't something with a quick cure and wasn't something she was even nearly qualified to deal with. She just had to hope…

"Sirens" she announced, suddenly concerned. "No" she argued, even as the others were tensing up, "they are going away from us" she said. Somewhere in her mind she had been so used to the idea that people were out to get them she had forgotten that this world had more important things to wonder about than one stolen car and a few oddly dressed people.

Of course if they were stopped…

Nabiki very deliberately put that thought aside, they simply could not be stopped, could not afford to be prevented from what they had planned. Even if they weren't charged with having a hand in Ryoga's death or the state of her sister they would still have to face the fact that Akane would be taken off to the funny farm and Ryoga would be buried, beyond even their reach; perhaps worst of all the one man they knew had a solution to this would hear they were back and would have time to prepare.

Right now they were hoping that the paucity of magic on this side meant that Dr Deighton would have no idea they were back, and wouldn't be prepared for the arrival of a few very pissed of former pawns in his plans.

What happened then would be between him and the blunt force of a martial artist's fists, glancing down at Ranma's Nabiki had little doubt that Deighton wouldn't enjoy the discussion

They swept through another area and suddenly the buildings of the University were looming about them. Gos's quiet words, spoken against the noise of the wind, were carefully guiding them to their destination, a house he knew well indeed.

He too had a hard expression on his face, deliberately fighting off all other thoughts as he fought his mind around to what he would need to do when they confronted his former master of all things mystical. He was utterly determined not to let him pull another one over on them.

If Akane noticed any of this then there was no sign of it, her wide open eyes fixed on the back of the seat in front of her, not even really reacting to the lights as they zipped past the window.

"Here" Gos supplied, and Ukyo brought them to a halt on the road between some faculty housing and one of the university buildings, "he's in six F" he supplied, nodding towards one of the shadowed edifices dimly illuminated by the amber streetlights.

Together, without any apparent signal, they all got out of the stolen car and stepped into the lamp-lit street, Ranma taking a turn to lit Gos. They looked from the building and back to each other, their deeply tanned faces made somehow spectral by the stillness on the night. Dimly in the distance they could hear those sounds of the living city around them but here things were ominously calm.

They all knew it, that this was a decision point that fundamentally altered the lives they would lead from here on out, there was no undoing what they planned, no ignoring of the consequences, this was the point of no return, either they broke into this man's house and compelled him to do their will or they didn't.

There would be no time for second thoughts later.

"Let's do this" Ukyo said, her voice solid and calm, determined. Of all of them he had perhaps the least to directly gain by this. Instead she would be walking away from all the trappings and luxuries she had worked so hard to earn, would be returning to a land that had caused her only hurt.

But there wasn't a single quaver in her voice, not a hint of doubt. For above all else Ukyo was he martial artist she had been raised to be. Martial artists didn't let others take the responsibility for their actions, martial artists didn't leave debts unpaid and martial artists did not desert the people who had stood by them.

Ranma opened his mouth to ask, to check that this was really what the chef wanted, but he was stopped by a stilling hand from Nabiki, standing once more by his side, "She's sure" Nabiki promised, and that was that.

Less than ten minutes later Ukyo was headed back down the stairs to fetch the charred form of the once lost boy and Nabiki was running her hand under the cold tap. Deighton, literally for his sins, was tied into a chair in his small kitchen, his left eye swelling fast, a vigilant Ranma glaring cold death at him while pretending not to be concerned about Nabiki.

The exiled mage had surprised them by not being in bed, as the front rank martial artists had kicked into his sleeping area he had actually stepped from the small bathroom, his face registering nearly as much shock as Nabiki's.

Of course while his reaction had been to draw a breath to shout Nabiki's had been to lash out with a hard right cross. Unfortunately for her she had been so surprised as to have forgotten most of the lessons that Ranma had taught her, and when her fist connected with Deighton's orbital ridge it wasn't nearly clenched enough.

It had made a very unpleasant crunch noise and the middle Tendo daughter had offered some fairly unladylike words to follow. But by that point Deighton was sparko on the floor, his consciousness having fallen away at the same time his legs had buckled.

"Found it!" exclaimed Gos, lost into the study room of the flat and searching for something that he claimed they would need.

"Good" Ranma offered, pulling up a chair and spinning it around to face it's back towards the bound mage before smoothly straddling it and bringing his eyes to Deighton's level.

"Your turn" the pig tailed warrior offered, not missing the confusion on the professor's face, or the twinge of fear as he took in the hard expression on Ranma's cyclopean face.

"My turn?" Deighton asked, his voice rasping dry thanks to the fear he was still trying to get under control and at the same time mesh these hard faced killers with the kids he had seen sent through the veil to the other side.

A few hours beforehand he had felt a ripple in that veil, what he now knew must have been these people coming through, but at the time he had been sure that it had been neither long enough nor strong enough to have been the gate he was expecting. So he had promised himself that he would investigate it first thing in the morning.

He was regretting that decision a very great deal right now.

When he had been in possession of all his powers, back on the side he was born to, or even if he had been given enough time to prepare himself on this side, he would have been feeling a lot more confident. But not only had these hard faced invaders taken him by surprise, not only were they dressed in clothes that bore some very worrisome dark stains but they also seemed to be taking this very personally indeed.

He had of course done some research since he had tricked Gosunki into taking his little crew across to the other side, unknowingly bound to do what Deighton himself could not and open the way for the once great mage's return, and so he had quickly recognised the people now holding him hostage, well by name anyway.

Because somehow the faces, scarred and soot darkened, hard and implacable, didn't quite fit the supposedly near innocent young people he had read about.

On the other hand Deighton was not so much of a fool as to doubt the identities or indeed the capabilities of the people in front of him, especially of the dark haired man who's face bore this new patch.

He had read about, checked and double-checked into this boy's history in particular, had even congratulated himself on securing such a capable agent, one whose skills would have stood him in such good stead on the other side. But now he was wishing he could take those thoughts back to, and block out the images of this man crushing stones with his bare hands.

"Your turn" Ranma agreed, flexing his hands together as he looked into the Mage's eyes, "because right now we're going to ask you a few questions" he explained, "and we better damn well like your answers " he told him, "or else" he finished and let Deighton's imagination do the rest.

Ranma and the others had already guessed that this man was not native to this side, his command of things mystical and the hints Gos had collected over the years of association proving circumstantial enough to amount to a reasonable argument. So they had also already guessed that he would be used to a less cultured way of thinking, and would have little trouble believing that Ranma and the others would systematically break him into very small pieces indeed should he try anything tricky.

But Nabiki had also pointed out that the man's imagination was going to be a lot more colourful than their language was likely to be, that for a man so used to being in control, the very lack of information would be a more effective weapon than most.

Of course she had also hinted that if push came to shove she could get pretty inventive herself, and quietly Ranma had sworn that he wouldn't make her do that if he could help it.

So he was laying it on thick and as he let Deighton contemplate what he had been told Ranma reached over and slowly drew the bright Katana he had rescued from deep within the dragon's tunnels, it's wave patterned blade a cold promise of some very permanent violence to come.

Deighton hadn't needed the extra encouragement, hadn't needed the hard sell, his mind was still trying to deal with the image his own mind had conjured up of this hard faced young man and a certain heart ripping technique he apparently knew and trying to work out exactly where this had gone wrong.  
"Uh!" Ranma commanded, cutting off Deighton's words before they could even be spoken, "We ask, you answer" he supplied, his tone making it a statement of fact, and hinting once more at nebulous 'bad things' should the exiled mage even think of transgressing.

Deighton nodded, swallowing hard as his vision swam once more, the fuzziness around the edges of what he was seeing more to do with just how hard the girl had hit him than the gloom cast by the one lamp that Ranma had chosen to put on and point at him.

"First" Ranma said, "you knew exactly what Gos had planned and set him up." It wasn't really a question, just a statement that Ranma was daring him to disagree with. Deighton wasn't that daft.

"And therefore everything that happened after that is your fault" Ranma continued, taking a leaf out of Ryoga's book and lumping cause and effects together whether they fit properly or not, "everything" he added, in a growl that took what remaining colour there was from Deighton's face.

"I had no way of knowing that would…" he began, only to be cut off by a glare from the returned Nabiki, now standing at Ranma's shoulder and looking for all the world like she would dearly love to rip his head right off his shoulders. Little did he know that the look was backed up by a realisation that somehow this man did know something of what had happened to them on the other side, that somehow he wasn't completely ignorant of the prices they had paid for his ambitions.

Ranma took his cue and loudly clenched the fist of his damaged hand, ignoring the flash of pain at the same time as he noted the look of terror that raced across the now once again silent professor. "Everything that.." he prompted, his voice a growl that didn't so much promise pain as primal violence.

"Everything that happened after that is my fault" the man agreed, his mouth drier than a desert dune and his bowels threatening to any moment reveal just how scared he was.

The flows between the two sides of the veil were never constant but they had allowed him more than an occasional glimpse of their progress on the other side. One such moment of clarity had let him see the night that Ohlmin had caught up with them before the wastes and even if he hadn't seen the detail of the aftermath he knew enough of the way such people operated to be able to guess a lot of it.

He had been truly relieved to see them alive the next time the veil cleared enough for sight, but hadn't for a moment tried to convince himself that the group had escaped unscathed.

Ranma let the man sweat for a moment, waiting for some sort of cue from Nabiki whose hand was now resting on his shoulder as she contemplated revising their plan, such as it was, maybe getting some payback for the things they had suffered.

With an effort of will she fought those thoughts down, her hand unconsciously clenching hard onto Ranma's shoulder as she forced herself to be practical. They needed this man and they needed his skills as much as they needed his talent for magic, breaking him just wasn't an option.

Fortunately they were bought some more time as Ukyo arrived back, the wrapped body of their valiant friend in her arms.

Seeing that, and putting it together with what he had just admitted to Deighton nearly fainted dead away, suddenly very afraid indeed that they were here to kill him, that all they were here for was revenge. "Oh hell" he whispered, his eyes falling closed as ice ran down his spine and he imagined he could feel eternity stretching out to receive him.

"Fortunately for you" Nabiki offered, calling his attention back to the people in front of him, and letting a glimmer of hope shine into the suddenly very bleak place that had once been his life, "we've decided to give you a chance to make some of it up to us" she told him and the glimmer became a beam.

"Anything" he promised, making no attempt to hide either his desperation or his fear.

"Right then" Nabiki told him, "here's what we expect" she began and proceeded to lay out the shape of their final hours on this side of that dividing veil.


	23. Left Behind

Arthur Simpson Deighton watched the young Nerimans disappear once more with a very mixed set of emotions running through his mind, his pulse only beginning to slow down as the last of the dancing motes that had consumed them disappeared.

First and foremost there was relief, the sure and certain knowledge that the threat these sudden invaders represented was gone with them, more or less. Since being exiled to this side he had learned to live with fear in a way he had never had to before, had learned to live with the helpless, crippled feeling of only ever being able to do the most minor of cantrips without an age of preparation, to live with the renewed fear of mortality he had thought left so very far behind him. But despite all that he had found himself afraid on whole new levels when they 'returned,' the trappings of his home side and the new hardness in their eyes enough to rob him of any last resolve.

Had he not lived the majority of his age old existence possessing powers literally beyond mortal ken, had he not suffered through the indignity of unexpected and enforced expulsion into a world he had known nothing about, had he not suffered through the harshness of this land towards the penniless poor then perhaps he might have had the focus to think ahead more than react.

But the simplest truth was that Arthur Simpson Deighton, once known as Artur Myrdain and a host of other mystical identities, had been terrified, too scared of what these people he knew he had wronged had learned of him, too scared of who might have supplied them with information or tools to hurt him and too scared as to what the darkness they all now carried with them might have enabled them to do to his all too mortal body.

There was of course remorse mixed in there too, a genuine aknowledgement that the horrors these people had been forced to face were of his making. When he had conceived the plan to send some local nexii through to open the way back for him he had considered finding some willing to go but had intellectually decided against it, unwilling to put himself into the power of others in even such a small way, even though it might have provided an opportunity to prepare them so much more for what it is they would need to face.

In his defence he had really not known how bad things would be for them, had possessed no way of knowing what troubles they would encounter with Ohlmin and his slavers and certainly had not the slightest inkling ahead of time that they would have had to face an ancient dragon just to reach the gate.

None of those he had sent through beforehand had ever gotten that far, the last lot barely finally identifying the name of a possible passageway through the veil between worlds before they had fallen afoul of one of his enemies.

But he had apparently chosen this lot well, better than those he had picked before and in hindsight his choice not to burden them with items of his creation that might have simplified their trip seemed to have panned out, have kept them hidden so much more than those before.

Even if it had effectively put them into the power of much more mundane forces than those ranked as the enemies of Myrdain.

But as these emotions faded away another came to dominate, a steady awareness of the opportunity missed, of this freshest of failures, of how close he had been to escaping this exile once and for all.

If only he had been awake as the door they had used had been opened, if only he ahd been more prepared for their return, if only he had thought to supply one small item that might have held that gate open, or even implant a fresh compulsion into them as he translated them once more….

For a good long while he raged, trashing his meagre abode in a fury, swearing in a language that had been old before the nation of Japan had dreamed of existence and cursing the every power of this unfair universe that had kept him here, crippled and impotent one more time.

But in the end he calmed, just before the police arrived at his door to ask about the noise and the ruin within. He dismissed them with another minor cantrip, sending them away oblivious to the concerns they should have had and remembering nothing of the strange sights they had not been meant to see.

Then Arthur Simpson Deighton, exiled archmage, sat down once more and began again.

Courage he might not have, but he was nothing if not persistent.


	24. Return

Ranma, as would surprise few who knew him, was one of the first to awake, more prepared this time for the nausea and discomfort of the transit he had managed to wall up enough of himself that he was barely unconscious for heartbeats before he was rolling to stand upright amid the green grass that surrounded the point of their arrival and summoning his chi in case it was needed.

Rapidly, efficiently, he looked around, his heart hammering adrenaline filled blood through his veins and his every sense straining as he reflexively searched for any danger that might be about, trusting to instinct to differentiate it from less harmful surrounds. All the time only dimly aware his mind was still dragging somewhere behind and trying to make sense of what it had just experienced while his body operate on effective autopilot.

He found no dangers in the immediate vicinity, his eyes travelling fast over the sprawled forms of his comrades and up to the looming building that they had appeared near. Even as he used his eyes to search it too for hostility his other senses just as automatically took in the chi states of his friends and the ambient Ki around them, stretching his awareness to levels far beyond that which most residents of his home world would have considered possible and evaluating each piece of information for any necessary response.

He existed solely in the moment, a creature of instinct, coiled and ready to combat any foe to so anything that his instincts required of him, perfectly poised, perfectly focused, seeing all and ready for anything.

Slowly however, as his instincts allowed him to relax away form the fight the focus slipped and the details that his fighting heart had dismissed as irrelevant began to filter in, from the grass under his feet to the warm pure air he was breathing once more and from the point of their arrival back to the large domed edifice that it had been aimed at.

The building, as he had expected from a place supposedly home to a pacifist order of healers, practically radiated a feeling of calm, of serenity and safety but his focus did not linger long on that for long. Instead, guided by an impulse he could not yet make sense of, he looked back to his friends once more.

His mind finally caught up with his reflexes his focus actually went to pieces, the memories of the burdens he had temporarily been allowed to forget coming crashing in, a tidal wave washing away all other thoughts into dark oblivion.

They might be where they wanted to be, they might not be under attack, but the woman he had once loved, once thought to make his life with, was still lingering in catatonia, her chi turned in on itself even as she gave every impression of being in a coma, and yet she was narrowly better off than Ryoga, still very much as dead as he had been when that fire had seared the life from him.

After that came the other wounds, like the remembered vision of Konatsu as he had coughed his last with that mystical bolt impaling into his body, dead and left behind on a dockside so very far from anywhere he had known; like the raw remembered horror of knowing himself unable to stop Ohlmin's plans for the women in his group; like the guilt that still stabbed into his heart when he quietly thanked the fickle fortunes none of Ohlmin's people had had cause to use cold water to wake him up; like the still gnawing hurt that stabbed into him everytime any of the girls revealed their pain; and the fresher guilt of Ryoga's loss, a friend who he had never really appreciated the depth of his bond with.

Compared to these the dull ache in a ruined hand and an empty eye-socket were as nothing.

But even as despair threatened an echo of the determination that had driven them to Deighton's door surged back up, the memory of the why carrying with it that slim promise of hope that some things at least might be fixed.

His eyes travelled back from the gardens behind them and to the tall dark wall in front, over the tall, apparently seamless shape of this ominous edifice. Quietly he closed his eyes and said a wordless prayer to anyone that might be listening that perhaps, just perhaps this place might be all that the rumours had said it would be.

Fresh noises from around behind him stirred his awareness again and in a flash Ranma was headed back to his friends, ditching his spirituality for the practical concerns of making sure that the ones who could be helped were.

For reasons that he was far from ready to admit yet Ranma's first stop was by the side of Nabiki, kneeling ready to help her should she need it but instead finding himself on the receiving end of an almost divine smile.

Whatever else was going on in Nabki's head seeing Ranma as the first thing when she woke was definitely not something she had issues with. Indeed her fuzzy mind was already following through on some other thoughts along the lines of thanking him when they were both interrupted by the woman to their side.

Ukyo greeted renewed awareness with an epithet that might have stripped the paint from the walls had they been inside, her Osakan accent seeming to add extra emphasis to the 'colourful' curse even as she fought her rebellious body back into obedience.

As one might expect one of the first things she reached for was her weapon, hard lessons that would possibly never be forgotten now imprinted onto her instincts just as similar ideas had been onto Ranma's. She however found no weapon and had even less reason to be calm about one's lack.

Her response was an instinctive terror, a shout that came right from the as yet not completely reformed memories of the last time she had been helpless and spoke right to her muscles, forcing them into motion.

Ranma caught her just before she fell back down again, only the familiarity of his face and the swiftness of his blocking arm saving him from a return trip to unconsciousness courtesy of her instinctive right cross.

And steadily he watched first recognition and then relief pass through her eyes before she sagged for a moment against his hold and let that wordless terror slip away, finally remembering to breathe and finally realising that the people who her mind so feared were neither here nor in any physical state to come here; filling the bellies of carrion creatures as they no-doubt now were.

"Thanks" she whispered, only a little shakily, a half smile coming to her face as rogue thoughts about just how good it did feel to be in Ranma's arms slipped through the chaotic mess that was her mind.

However, much like Nabiki before her, any further thoughts, scattered as they were, along those lines were interrupted by the awakening of another of their too-small group. In this case it was Gosunki, the one member of the group for whom this Side was not wholly undreamt of.

Warned of the transit Gos had taken steps to protect himself this time, had gone to some significant lengths to set up secretive tell tales that would alert him should their less than completely willing 'benfactor' have been up to his old tricks, even going as far as to build a mental construct that would duplicate his own mind, much like a backup disk for a computer might.

However his ambitions had been a little more than his abilities could handle, which is why he, instead of sailing through the transit unharmed, was still trying to piece together which parts of his own mind were real and which parts were sections of the corrupted 'backup'

None of his friends looking at him would have for a moment believed this process was anything if not painful, the cry that came first from Gos's suddenly shaking body enough to throw all other thoughts aside and summon them all to him.

Despite all that Nabiki had learned, mostly out a mix of curiosity and obstinacy, last time they were on this side she didn't for a moment consider herself well versed in the lore that explained the magical mechanics of her current surrounds. Which meant that she had been more or less completely unable to assist Gos in his attempts to ensure they weren't tampered with again and had left him as their only backup from that direction.

Seeing him twitching in pain was not what any of them would call a good sign.

In fact they were all already trying to come up with backup plans by the time he eventually did stop shaking and shouting, finally returning to some semblance of sentience.

"Is Okay" he offered, somewhat hoarsely to where Ranma was trying to stabilise his chi flows with what was his best attempt at a plan B "Just a little static in the box" he insisted, making absolutely no sense to any of them barring Nabiki who still had to struggle to make the correlation.

"be kaykay soon" he offered, his eyes just about focusing on the person in front of him, even if he did think he was seeing Ukyo rather than the middle Tendo who in fact it was.

Eventually they took his word for it and set to dealing with the other issues that had been awaiting their attention, Nabiki starting with her sister and Ranma with Ryoga's remains while Ukyo wandered over to the sack full of gear that Nabiki and herself had scrounged up before they had left.

"No change" Nabiki commented ruefully, having received absolutely no response to anything she did about her sister and no joining Ukyo sorting through the gear.

"Likewise" Ranma added, joining them from the other direction. He most of all of them hadn't really understood when Nabiki had delayed their transit to pick up a choice of things from around Deighton's house but now he was starting to more or less see why a some of the books might be useful, if he had yet to work out why Deighton would have thought the same when he presumably collected them.

On the other hand he could see the use of things like the packets of Ramen and container of good tea that he had purloined from the mage's kitchen and was currently debating whether now was a good time to get a brew on and finally slake that craving he had been harbouring for so long with a properly brewed cuppa.

"We should stash some of this before we go in" Nabiki asserted, her own mind working on slightly less immediate levels, "in case the Matriarch doesn't approve.." she explained, not even beginning to be able to guess what the apparently near divine leader of the sect would think about a textbook on the evolution of armaments or a medical almanac but not really wanting to waste such items if she didn't approve.

"She'll know we have them" Gos offered, his voice still a little raspy as he stepped up from where he had been checking through the items he had acquired in much the same way.

Of course he had a fairly good guess that he hadn't managed to get his hands on many of the 'juicier' items that Deighton presumably had with him or had managed to accumulate but as someone had said when he had suggested taking the time to find such things, they had only had so long before the guy either called their bluff or forced one of them to do something permanent to him.

Neither of which had been a particularly comfortable idea for the young man who was still trying to mesh the idea of a brain-tampering exiled arch mage with the nice old professor who had shared an interest in the occult with a wheelchair bound student of his.

"Once we go in there" he continued, gesturing towards the imposing home of the sect that they had been promised housed the woman in question, "there won't be any secrets" he explained, quoting another fact he had been promised by people who had claimed to know, one thing that all the mages he had met back in Pathandaway had been less than keen on had been stepping through those doors and thus putting themselves in Her power as they were about to.

But Gos was hoping that was mostly due to their fragile egos and desire to keep secrets from one another rather than any secret knowledges they had chosen not to share about this lady; already his mind was conjuring up a horror film he had watched that was none too dissimilar to this situation, where the heroes had gone to a far away monastery only to find the monks there were in fact vampires in disguise. But he was trying not to voice that fear.

It was after all a little late for second thoughts.

"Fair enough" Nabiki replied, shrugging her shoulders in resignation, and fighting down her own revulsion at the idea of ALL her secrets being known, "saves us worrying is someone's going to dig it up while we are away" she offered, her words doing little to really cover her discomfort.

Ranma, as it to once again underline how much he had changed from his days in Nerima, apparently did manage to pick up on either her tone or the implications of what Gos was saying and infer what they might mean to the intensely private Nabiki, because he chose that moment to offer her a comforting look, a silent promise that he would be there.

He received a smile and a grateful nod in reply, showing that he wasn't the only one who had changed, and apparently even the ice queen had learned how to accept help in the manner it was offered some of the time.

"Just as long" Ukyo argued, reaching to start picking up their 'booty' "as nobody starts getting all touchy feely" she said, having apparently had a little more than passing familiarity with 'healers' on their own side.

"And the first one who asks me about my relationship with my father gets decked" she asserted, her return to surliness actually rather comforting for her friends, if only because it was more like what they had grown used to of late.

"No love-ins and no Freud" Nabiki agreed, with a hint of a smile creeping around her lips, "anything else?" she asked the rest of them, clearly already assuming that she was going to be the one doing the negotiations here.

It was only then that the rest of them started to realise that this might not be as simple as they had thought, where they came from there might be an expectation of benevolence from the monastic and the clerical but they really had no evidence that the same largesse would exist here.

Only now were they beginning to realise that what they were asking might be rather expensive indeed.

"Told you we should have had his Rolex" Ukyo groused, shrugging her pack into place, "Guess she'll just have to take an IOU" she finished, correctly surmising in much the same way that Gos had that there wasn't a lot they could do to change things anymore.

Those die were cast.

Together, with Gos quietly once more enjoying the ability to move under his own power and Ranma considerably less happily bearing the burden of Ryoga while Nabiki struggled on with Akane, the group rounded the corner that they had been covered by and stepped out to the front of the building, finally catching a look at the entrance, and indeed the road that led to and from it.

"You can see where the waste begins again" Ranma observed, nodding down the almost deserted road towards where the green ended.

"It's a circle" Gos supplied, calling on more knowledge he had picked up along the way, "the area the Matriarch protected when the big fight happened" he continued, not choosing to speculate then about who those combatants might have been, that was a matter for another time.

"There's a town over there" Ukyo insisted, nodding towards where some smoke plumes rose in the distance, presumably closer to the waste's edge.

"Metryll" Nabiki supplied, remembering it from their maps, "Mostly serves the people coming to the Tabernacle" she added, imagining along with the others a place that would therefore probably cater very nicely to travellers before she again remembered that there were rewards out for some of them in a city none too far from here.

"Ryoga and Akane first" Ranma replied, cutting through those thoughts, "then we'll worry about tomorrow" he insisted, perhaps proving he hadn't changed all that much.


	25. Bargains

Of course a few moments later the Nerimans managed to work out that was no big trick, that the cleric in question was probably merely using a simple spell to be understood in the language that her listeners were most familiar with, but that hadn't stopped some very wild theories starting.

If there was a grand conspiracy though there was no evidence of it, and instead of some dark suit wearing agents springing out on them the clerics didn't so much as falter in their smiles.

Nabiki, her 'game' face now firmly set in place, was the first to step forward, aware for the first time in many hours of just how shabbily she and her friends were dressed, the stains of soot, dirt and blood still discolouring the clothes they had worn for the trip through the dragon's lair, that had themselves seen better days. There was even a hint of a sulphurous air about them, a leftover of the same place that she was only no noticing again, and only because it contrasted so much with their hosts.

Nabiki quickly recognised the tactic for what her cynical mind said it was, a simple method of asserting superiority over the petitioners, most of who would at the very least have had to travel across a section of the waste to get here, and a good number of which would be in even worse state, or else they wouldn't be coming here.

So the clerics drew a line between them and their petitioners, their clean clothes marking them as something purer, better than the raggedy garments that they were faced with. Probably the only truly white cloth within leagues was the material from which the clerics had drawn their robes.

Nabiki was not however about to get wrong footed here, she had many years more history of negotiations to draw on, and not a small amount of formal learning. She wasn't about to let a small thing like appearances slow her down.

"Thank you" she said instead, nodding confidently to the greeter and smiling deliberately as she straightened up and, proud backed, accepted the invitation, stepping as if what she was wearing was royal raiment rather than battered travel cloth.

"You will see to our burdens?" she cued, her hand sweeping out to illustrate the forms of her sister and brave Ryoga, deliberately adding an assumptive, almost unconcerned tone to her words even as if she did this sort of thing every day.

But while the hand swept out she was also firing a 'look' at the rest of her group, warning them to follow her lead and not to object. One she knew would be ignored by at least one of them, but that was part of things too.

"I'll carry-" Ranma began to assert, having absolutely no intention of giving up Ryoga's form to anyone, not now or in the future.

"You'll do as you're told!" she snapped in reply, her tone deliberately harsh, her eyes deliberately flashing with more anger than she felt. The act clearly demonstrated to all who might be watching, and she was assuming they were, just who was in charge, and just who made the decisions.

Which is why she had prompted it in the first place.

She just hadn't counted on how much the hurt look that Ranma fired back would hurt in return.

But she was nothing if not a professional and this was what she was supposed to be best at. Ranma and the others could outfight even ancient dragons, had proved it, but they couldn't hold a torch to her here, and finally she was going to get a chance to earn her keep.

Not that any of the others had ever thought she hadn't done along the way, but Nabiki wasn't thinking like that right then, she was too busy dealing with her own guilt to really make that distinction.

The cleric merely nodded in reply, a faintly amused lift to the corner of one lip saying that perhaps this wasn't the first time she had seen an act like this but also saying that she wasn't about to make an issue of it.

Instead the woman gestured with a hand and summoned one of her flows forward before they took the bodily burdens from their latest guests, the power of their faith rendering the weight next to nothing.

If Ranma noted the ease with which the women lifted Akane and Ryoga he gave little sign of it, instead he was still trying to work out what Nabiki was about, and steadily moving closer to the point at which he was going to admit defeat on that one.

His teaching said that possession was nine tenths the law, that handing over the bodies of their friends was a loss rather than a gain, and therefore that Nabiki was wrong. But it also said that you didn't ever know all the forms and he could literally count on a single hand the number of times he had known her to be wrong. While the number of times she had beaten him at this game was well beyond numeration.

So he resigned himself to another long session of following her lead and waiting close by in case things did go wrong…

Camly the two white clad figures led the Nermians into the building proper, into the stone lined pristine halls that suddenly seemed so vacant.

Within a few paces into the hall even the few others they had seen at the door had disappeared and for all they could see they were the only beings in all the vast edifice, walking through this serene place hearing only the resounding of their own footfalls.

For Ranma there was an eerie familiarity about all of this, well nearly all of it; so many of the temples he had gone to on his long sojourn had tried to achieve this kind of hollow serenity, and he had often turned up in states as bad as he now was, and every bit as desperate for their help, albeit for himself and his father rather than for his friends and normally for more mundane matters like food for their bellies or a hiding place from a mob rather than asking for life to be returned to two fallen fellows.

All of which might have explained why he was still more busy thinking on what Nabiki was up to rather than paying a great deal of attention to where they were going.

Twice as they proceeded Ukyo went to speak, to break the silence they travelled in but both times she changed her mind, instead lapsing back into quiet and following on meekly behind their suddenly imperious friend and the white clad guides.

Like Ranma she was relatively used to this sort of thing, having gone to more than her fair share of temples in the years she was battling the sea to train hard enough to exact her father's revenge, and also having had to on occasion formally ask for help from them. But unlike Ranma she was far from at ease, her own temper still simmering in the background and her own mindset less eager just to accept Nabiki's lead on things.

But somehow that temper, normally shifting into vocalisation so very quickly these days, just didn't seem to be boiling over like it should. She would later figure it ha something to do with some enchantment on the place, but for the moment just didn't seem to care all that much.

Instead she just tried to work out what they needed all this space for if there were so few people about.

That to would later be answered, but for the moment it remained as much of a mystery as their eventual destination.

The second mystery was however soon answered as, having crossed another silent open colonnade bound garden, their guides led them up to what could only be some sanctum doors, their massive metal bulk seeming to shout purpose and distinction.

Onto their immense, reflective surface a thousand images were engraved, subjective and symbolic even trying to follow their nuances threatened all sorts of headaches. And in the middle of it all were two large metal rings, the handles that would open these sentinels.

Here the guides stood aside, allowing the Nermian exiles to step forward, perhaps watching for their own reasons as to who would be brave enough to take this final step.

Of they had thought to see awed hesitation or indeed any trepidation however they were soon disappointed, this was no ordinary group of petitioners and nor was it any local born citizens brought up on stories of the wonders beyond these gates.

Ranma, his mind still wandering as he tried to figure out just how he and Nabiki fit together since that kiss and that tone, wandered up to the rightmost gate, turned the handle and gave it a shove. All with about as much ceremony as he might have given to a bento box lid, maybe less.

It was left to Gos, alone among them knowing more about this than what they were seeing now, to feel the awe of the moment. It was rumoured that not one petitioner in a thousand ever so much as saw these gates, let alone passed through them into the presence of her who supposedly resided within.

His cultured Japanese brain rebelled at the ideas of near deity that clothed the stories of the Matriarch of this house, trying to explain away her apparent agelessness as just another trick presumably done by keeping the succession in a family line and making sure the Matriarch of the generation was well enough covered that nobody would be able to tell when she changed, that her rumoured powers were as likely to be through fairly minimal medicinal skills as through great magics, either would seem as supernatural as the other to people unaware of them.

But the fact that he was doing so standing on his own two feet once more was enough to see off that cynicism, this wasn't Japan, and this wasn't the dull humdrum world he had been born to; here magic did exist and there was no reason in the universe to doubt that they were going into the presence of one of it's greatest practitioners.

Ukyo might have wandered in with little more than curiosity tinged with relief at finally arriving, Ranma wandered in mostly because Nabiki did ahead of him but Gos stepped over that threshold with awe in his heart and eyes wide open for what he expected to be a wonder of the world they all now resided in.

He was not to be disappointed.

The room they stepped into was vast, a magical domed cavern that seemed to be both personal and close as well as immense beyond scale. Above them birds seemed to fly among indoor clouds, to their sides the room seemed to extend from view, filled with the comings and goings of millennia, and vacant as any tomb.

But all eyes were drawn inorexibly to the red-carpeted terraced steps that in turn led up to the throne that topped it and the woman within.

Garbed in robes of white and gold she seemed utterly ageless and ancient beyond measure, beautiful and alien; there was instantly no doubting the power that resided in her frame, or the intelligence that literally shone from her eyes, and there was absolutely no doubting just whose presence they had stepped into.

With a modern Japanese attitude to obescience it was only Gos who found himself falling to his knees automatically, the others following only when it occurred to them as something that might be more appropriate than a bow.

If the hesitation offended the ageless Matriarch then she gave no sign of it, nor any sign of much else, instead merely seeming to regard the newly arrived people as if they were but one small thing currently intruding onto a vastly more complex mind.

Where Ranma was, formally bowing as he might have to a master, he got the distinct impression that indeed they weren't the only people that the woman was looking at, that somehow the echoes that flitted around the edges of his vision were also somehow really here.

He shook off that thought, not really knowing where it came from in the first place and instead looked behind him for whether the 'guides' had followed them.

There was no sign of either them or he doors they had just stepped through, only the vastness of the room and it's near emptiness.

"Worry not for your comrades" the voice said, sounding from all around and just the top of the dais at the same time. "They are here" she said, not even bothering to explain either how that was possible or how she had known what Ranma was thinking.

At which point it suddenly occurred to him that it had been his thought she had answered and he rapidly tried to look over to where Nabiki was, checking that she wasn't about to tell him off again.

Only to find that moving wasn't possible at all.

At which point he was again going to protest when an echo of her words seemed to make its way back to his mind, and answer that question as well.

Which sort of made him feel even more foolish and in all the more need of holding his pigtail while he worked out what he was supposed to say next.

"I know who you are" she said, cutting off that plan too, "and why you are here" she added, "that has never been in question" she asserted, "merely whether it is in my best interests to grant your boon" she supplied.

Which sort of once again took all that he had had to say away. This really wasn't his forte in the slightest, heck even his father was better at getting things out of people than he was, albeit normally by offering Ranma in marriage.

But somehow he didn't really think this woman wanted to be another fiancée…

A tinkle of honest, golden, pure laughter floated down from the dais, and Ranma's face coloured afresh, only now remembering that she was hearing everything he thought.

"No need to apologise" she said, before the words reached his mouth, "and perhaps you underestimate your worth still" she added, confusing him afresh.

Did that mean she did want to be a fiancée? And what the heck would the other girls say about that, what would Nabiki say about that?

Meanwhile Nabiki was having a very different conversation. Unlike Ranma he had come in prepared for this divine being to know what it was they wanted, it wasn't after all hard to guess bearing in mind who they had brought with them and in what state, especially considering the purpose of the order they ahd brought them too. But she had been willing to bet that the woman-goddess didn't know all that they had to offer.

So she had prepared herself to bargain with all the knowledge contained in that medical almanac and everything else that Nabiki had picked up over the years of being around high powered, fight prone, martial artists.

"I have no interest in that" The voice announced, silencing Nabiki before she could even begin her offers. "Any of that" the voice continued, cutting through the second rank of counter offers too.

"Your science will come in time, the knowledge you carry make it's own way into the world, I have no need to hasten it's arrival.

"Nor any need for your chemistry nor the knowledge of any tome you have brought with you.

"All that you offer I already know" the voice asserted, "all that you have come to bargain with I have already at my disposal. Our needs are beyond your ability to comprehend" the voice finished and for the first time in a long history of negotiation Nabiki was genuinely concerned that she would not be able to even agree a price for what she needed.

Ukyo was perhaps not such a quick study, having steadily grown moe irate as the voice had predicted and answered all of her questions and proposals even before they could be voiced. In the end the voice apparently simply tired of her temper, tired of answering the steadily more petulant thoughts and simply stopped the former chef, absolutely and utterly.

Gos on the other hand was struggling even to gather his thoughts enough to form anything for her to answer, his very first impulse little short of absolute dread. He had been earnestly hoping that the Matriarch would have concluded everything she wanted to conclude with Nabiki and he wouldn't have had to risk his clumsy methods of speech with her at all.

Finding himself frozen and apparently singled out to do all the talking nearly sent him into one of the panic attacks he had thought left behind in his youth, deathly afraid that eh was going to say or do something that would bring down their wrath on all their heads.

"One of your friends had a similar desire" the voice announced, "although perhaps less emphatically" it said and suddenly the panic subsided, Gos managing to grasp hold of the fact that she was indeed talking to the others too and hold onto it desperately.

For all the growing up he had done recently he still would much rather as little as possible actually rested on his all too narrow shoulders, they had more than enough guilt just now as it was. He would happily go with whatever they decided, just as long as it didn't have to be his call.

"Very well" the voice finished and he felt some of the presence receded and let him breathe once more, relaxing down now the weight of that responsibility was off of him.

"Look lady" Gos heard, and needed not a moment to know it was Ranma who was speaking, even if he could still not turn to see the pig tailed warrior that had become part of their very core, "You can't really be after that" Ranma said, "or else somehow Oajii would have found a way to sell me ta ya a long time ago" he insisted, apparently completely unaware of any of the honourifics this woman was entitled to.

Gos cringed and Ranma continued undaunted.

"So hows about you tell us what it is you want and we cut the.." Whatever word that was going to be used to end that never happened, and Gos found himself as thankful as he had ever been for that small mercy at least.

"What I want" the voice said, not appearing to really interrupt Ranma but instead merely speaking as if completely in it's own time, "is you" she said and the silence that followed was filled with a thouand other thoughts.

They ranged from Ranma's 'not again' to Gos's mind numbing terror of being eaten soul and body as the darkest whispers of the stories about this woman had hinted at, and from Ukyo's reflexive 'go shove it up yer…' to Nabiki's just as instinctive request for clarification.

"Since you arrived here" the voice continued, "you haven't only made your way across the civilisation that resides in these parts, but you have also shaken it to its core she said. "challenging institutions from the primacy of so called noble blood to the Slaver's guild, from the might of the wizards of Pathandaway to an ancient power literally older than the mountains themselves."

There wasn't a lot for them to say about that, even if most of those actions had been more or less accidental, incidental to the mission they hadn't even been willing participants on in the first place, but nevertheless they had done them and denying it would be as fruitless as trying to say that they would have done things differently if they had the choice again.

At the end of the day they were who they were and living peacefully was one thing that apparently did not come naturally to any of them.

"I want you to continue that" the voice continued, "To continue to fight for what you believe is right; to continue to voice your opinions, to stand against the wind and not bend with it"

It wasn't exactly a lot to ask for them, not one of them could really see any of the others suddenly learning to respect the status quo, especially with a bagful of secrets outside and a heartful of bushido inside.

"Each of you carries within you a seed to be something great, from which might grow great things for all the people of this world" she asserted, "what I want is for you to nurture that seed and see it grow, to be all you can be"

"That is my price" the voice supplied, "for the healing of you and your comrades, for the returning of life to brave Ryoga and of mind to young Akane" she said, "and it is not negotiable." She finished with a very final note, leaving absolutely no doubt that their decision now would be binding, and that this offer would not be made again.

For Ukyo the request was a joke, a nothing. All that the voice seemed to be asking for was for them to be themselves, to not run and hide like the spineless denizens of this side, and she had more than enough hate to go around yet and really didn't expect to run out as long as there was a slaver still breathing.

Ranma too had little compunction in agreeing, even if he did see things a little differently than Ukyo. He didn't fail to notice for instance that the price very directly implied that if they were to find a way home in the future then they would be honour bound not to take it. He also noted there was no clause in there about retirement at all.

And he could guess why; their trip across this civilisation but a short taste of the sort of trials that they might face if they agreed, stepping out of here with an honour bound promise to fly against the established order, to fight for a brighter tomorrow

Even so, and even accepting that it might mean an early grave long before he was grey and old, there was no real problem in agreeing, not for him. Ranma's own code would have ensured the same choices anyway, as long as he held his honour dear he couldn't sit by and let bad things happen where he might have prevented them, not and still call himself a martial artist.

But they were not the ones that the Matriarch was most looking at, and nor was Gos, already sworn to follow the decision of the others, in fact it was Nabiki on whom the decision most rested, for it was her that this decision most ran against the apparent grain of.

All her adult life she had carried around the stigma of the Ice queen, the appearance of self service and callous disregard for the feelings of others. If you had suggested to any one of her hundreds of 'marks,' any number of people who had lost money in her betting pools or found their lunch money already owed before it was granted then the very idea of her dedicating herself to something larger than herself might have been could for derision.

But none of them had ever known what she did with the money, what drove the young businesswoman to such extreme lengths, and nor had they asked. None of them could remember the crushing poverty that her family had faced once her father stopped teaching and none of them cared to realise how targeted a lot of her dealings were.

Kuno didn't just pay the most because he was the richest or the dumbest, he had paid because his lusts should have had costs attached. Okay the money had been more important than the lesson but the lesson had been far from completely irrelevant to her.

But this was a different order of magnitude, a million miles from taking the money from people who should have known better and even further from hustling for bread money. Alone of all the Nerimans Nabiki really understood what was being asked of them.

The matriarch wasn't just asking them to cause trouble, she was asking for a revolution, for the Nerimans to stand proud with ideals that should have been a thousand years away for these people and fight to make them a reality.

"What do I get out of it?" the voice said, a peculiar tone to it suggesting that once again she was speaking only to Nabiki and not the all of them. "I am afraid you will probably never know that" the voice said, revealing for the first time that it's owner did not after all have all the facts, "but perhaps it is just a dream of a better world?" the voice finished and Nabiki had no grounds to argue.

With a nod that felt like the tolling of a bell Nabiki too agreed, and the pact was sealed, the Neriman Exiles had set their course and there was no going back anymore.


	26. Beyond the day

The Nerimans stepped blinkingly out into a sunlit world that they hadn't seen in what their bodies remembered as months, still brushing the accumulated dust off their shoulders and trying to fit everything they had seen and heard within into their minds, but their ruminations were somewhat hugely interrupted by the presence of a person they hadn't seen in a good deal longer than that.

In the lee of the vast cathedral, standing alone on sun speckled grass and dressed in his habitual travelling gear was a young man that they hadn't just feared dead, but had carried the burned corpse of, his slightly fanged mouth broken into an uncomfortable smile. Of the burned ruin they had mourned over there wasn't the slightest trace.

For a moment the four of them stopped and stared, blinking now for very different reasons than the comparative brightness of the sun. Ryoga meanwhile slowly reached a hand up behind his bandanna-ed head and offered, "Hey guys", his voice solid and real as it had been before that fateful day. "Sorry about this" he offered, his tone re-enforcing the sincerity of his words, "How'd you thank some people who give up everything they know to bring you back from-" he began but he never got to finish as instead he was rushed by the others.

"Pig boy!"

"Ryoga!"

"Sugar!"

"Wow!"

The first came from Ranma, temporarily excused his thoughtlessness if only because of the occasion, and completely forgiven by a Ryoga who was every bit as stunned at seeing his buddy once more, not least of which at seeing his friend whole, his eyes and hands complete as they hadn't been since that terrible morning when everything had gone so very very wrong. He threw an almost lazy punch at each the other man, about as close as either of them really got to a hug.

The last came from Gos who was busy carefully, 'scientifically' prodding the apparition in front of him, even more amazed now that the act of resurrection had it's physical proof. In his mind he reckoned that he alone could guess at the sheer magnitude of what the Matriarch had achieved, the monumental expenditure of energy and power merely healing the flesh would have taken, let alone the recall and re-integration of the departed spirit. Quietly he had struggled all along to believe that such had been possible, even for someone of such legendary status as the Matriarch, yet here Ryoga was, Living proof in a very literal sense. It was magic beyond even the wuthering heights he had learned to be accustomed to on this side of the veil.

The girls were somewhat more physical, Ukyo all but lifting her friend off the deck as she squeezed him hard enough to cut off his air supply and Nabiki contenting herself with a simpler but no less heartfelt embrace.

"We missed you" she promised, the words laden with all manner of things none of them were quite ready to say aloud.

The reunion was however soon cut a little short as other real world issues forced their way through the miraculous, things like Ryoga, as he was finally allowed some air, clearly being utterly shattered and the rest of them being very much aware of how fragrant they weren't; unlike Ryoga they were still in the same clothes that they had arrived in, sulphur and brimstone satins and all.

More than even this though there was another thought that they were all silently sharing, Ryoga most blatantly of all as he looked about them in quiet askance, not quite daring to ask where their missing number was.

It took Nabiki a moment to admit what they were all looking for and only then, in a voice that told how much she was still conflicted about it, she explained, "Akane won't be better yet" she said, all eyes turning to her, silently demanding more information, "the mind won't heal as easily as the body" she paraphrased, something in her tone letting all the others know exactly where she stood on such facts. In fact there had been quite a lengthy 'discussion' between her and the Matriarch over the very issue, including some very bitter words spoken by Nabiki, and she was deliberately trying to avoid the same now. If nothing else the conversation with the apparently far from all powerful near deity had convinced her that there was nothing she could do about the Matriarch's decision, however she felt about it.

"But she will be better" Nabiki said, quoting directly now, and fighting down her misgivings to put on the brave front the others needed "and she is among friends" she said, "who will let no harm come to her" she promised, "no matter what" she added, just in case any of their minds had started to hear the word 'hostage' as hers had when she had first been told about her sister's extended stay. It didn't take a big leap of imagination to realise that even gratitude for Ryoga's miracle wouldn't stop the others from storming the very Taberncale if they thought for a moment that something underhanded was going on here.

"We have a rough time ahead of us" she added, offering one of the Matriarch's most telling arguments but not going into the details of that yet either, "and we need not to be worried about Akane almost as much as she needs to be somewhere she isn't worrying about slavers" The last word came out as evenly as Nabiki could make it, but there was no way she could completely suppress her distaste at the word, and even if she had the flare of raw anger in every other set of eyes around the small circle would have made the effort meaningless. The dragon might have hurt them really very badly, even temporarily killed one of their number, but they didn't hate it, there wasn't enough left of it to hate. The filth that made their lives by the trading of the lives of others however….

Revenge was not a strong enough word.

"Konatsu?" Ranma asked, a dark hope in his tone revealing that he had dared to think there might be one more than they had asked for. The simple emotion putting a shame to Nabiki's own thoughts. He was taking her at her word, trusting her again as simply as he had since then, and already moving on to other issues. Issues that to her discomforture she had honestly all but forgotten completely about.

The loss of the dedicated young ninja was still there but so much seemed to have happened since then, the weeks been years..

"Beyond even her" Ukyo quoted, her own tone somewhere between ironical disdain and long drawn out frustration, she hadn't forgotten. Of course she had asked about her friend, and indeed gone on to have an argument no less vociferous than the one Nabiki had shared on behalf of her sister, but in the end she too had been forced to accept that their 'benefactor' had her limits and that the young ninja was beyond even those, or at least beyond what the woman-goddess could be persuaded to use on their behalf, even with all the young chef had offered in return

The news hit Gos like one of Happosai's bombs, draining the sudden flare of hope from his eyes and twisting his gut in ways that nobody needed to read minds to know. He too had apparently dared hope, if not actually vocalise that hope. The fresh dashing of which was like a bolt through his own chest.

"Hey" Ranma offered, cutting in before Nabiki could think of anything to say, "where there is a will there is a…" he offered sincerly, at least some of that indomitable boy who had refused to stop looking for cures to his curse was still alive and well, "she's not the only power about this world" he said, and Gos gave a reluctant nod, recognising the effort for what it was but comforted all the same.

Ukyo meanwhile brightened far more considerably, "Hell!" she swore, "I hadn't thought of that" she admitted, turning to Gos ready to begin asking him what he might know about other options…

And meanwhile Ranma was going on to say something about there maybe even being someone who could do something about curses…

"Whoa" Nabiki offered "It can wait" she said, "sorry" quietly but firmly taking charge for a while longer, "remember what the Matriarch said!" she added, ominously referring to the parting words that had still been ringing in their ears as they had left.

"The boon is given" Gos quoted, not making any attempt to duplicate the unearthly tone of the voice, "and there shall not be another" he added, another twist of his gut showing in his face as for a moment he contemplated the finality that had been delivered with, "Neither I nor my church shall aid you again. You must now leave, never to return to these halls.

Gird yourself" he quoted "your enemies will soon enough know you live" he finished, just as the Matriarch herself had done so, without needing to name those enemies any more than she did.

"We'll need somewhere to camp" Ranma said, following Nabiki's lead and taking on the immediate details now the course was set, "and an assessment of what we have" he added. "And some food" he tacked on a little louder, while his stomach churned agreement "What?" he asked, as the others variably rolled their eyes or shook their heads "You want me to starve to death?" he tried, attempting some humour, and getting a few smiles, along with a comradely slap around the head from Ukyo.

"We'll also need to know if we're wanted hereabouts" Nabiki warned, "and if there are any here who might want to collect?" she suggested, reminding them all that there was a bounty on their heads yet and that without the sanctuary of the Tabernacle they might yet be painfully exposed.

"Camp, food, security" Ranma parroted, agreeing

"Then plans" Nabiki finished, and this time there was no argument.

In the end they found a place to camp fairly easily, there were many useful sites left around the area, made presumably by would be tabernacle petitioners or their escorts who had waited to hear the outcome of their own pleas, and the site was quickly made more secure with the rapid fashioning of a thorny fence chopped and dragged from local scrub. It was more than they would have done before but nobody questioned the need.

Food proved to be even less of a problem, Ukyo's keen aim bringing down two brace of birds, and a rather rude reply telling the rest of them just how much she was worried if the clerics of the Healing Hand didn't like the killing of their avian life. The feathers were quickly stripped and a flat rock procured for backing purposes.

Nabiki, with Ranma watching over her, disguised by a newly reckoned out spell from Gos, did a quick tour of some of the other camps, apparently trading but mostly after the information that Nabiki had already stated to be vital. To their relief such information was readily imparted by people who were only too happy to share a story with strangers claiming to be in a similar boat to themselves.

By the time the fowl were cooked the five of them were back together again and Ukyo had even managed to turn some of the traded flour that Nabiki had acquired as part of the proceedings into something approaching a pancake wrap to put the bird meat into. They were all soon sat around the fire, eating and thinking, waiting for Nabiki to relay what she had found, more than one of them wondering at just how natural this had all become.

"Good news and bad" Nabiki said at last, taking a brief moment to reflect how her expensive tastes in cuisine had plummeted since she had come to this side, but enjoying the 'duck' wrap anyway. "The good is that standard law about here says we are safe from attack even without the explicit protection of the sanctuary" she said, her tone saying once again that she wasn't about to put a huge amount of faith into that protection if they didn't have to, "and that there are no representatives of the slaver's guild here" she said to the obvious relief of some of the listeners.

"The bad?" Ukyo asked, actually smiling a bit now she was eating and for once neither nursing a hangover or actually getting drunk. But then a month of suspended animation while waiting in the tabernacle had apparently done wonders drying her system out in ways that even the crossing of the desert hadn't. Not to say she wouldn't actually really appreciate a decent drink just then, but she was finding it easier to ignore that for the moment than she had expected.

"They're close" Nabiki offered, not needing to explain who 'they were, and immediately clapping a hand onto Ranma's shoulder to stop him leaping off to find them, "As in" she continued pointedly, "they were here up until two days ago" she said, feeling Ranma relax and settle back down again, almost completely back to his only habitually wary state. At least now though he was going to listen to the rest of what she had to say.

"The hand does not refuse healing to chattels" Gos quoted, another saying he had picked up from somewhere, "it makes sense for them to swing through here and let their chains recover before moving them on" he said, "fatten them up for the block" the venom in his tone saying all anyone needed to know about how much he agreed with that kind of sense, and speaking volumes of his own lingering hatred for the filth that made their living in such a way.

"They're gone now?" Ryoga asked, his tone solid as he made very sure, the determination he had found before the dragon still apparently very much with him and very much aimed at the people who had done most to hurt them all since they got here. Even without Akane here to be a physical reminder of that hurt he was apparently finding ways to nurture his own anger.

"Yes" Nabiki said, "and their slaves with them" she added, because she knew it as only a matter of time before the subject came up, and this way at least she might manage the next logical step. She could tell just from the faces of those around her that something was brewing, and was finding it hard to justify any disagreement with the sentiments that brew was springing from.

"Which way?" Ukyo asked, her tone more or less exactly what Nabiki had expected it to be, the implication almost as obvious from that as the way she was now gripping the knife she had recently been carving the roasted fowls with, a silent promise of violence to come.

As she looked around Nabiki saw the rest of her friends' expressions come into line too, just as she had guessed they would. Their hurt, the rescue on the way to Bremon, and the recent promises to the Deific woman who had healed them all contributing to a shared thought of necessary action.

Even so she felt it necessary to make sure, "We don't need to do this" she said, "we can't stop every caravan" she insisted, studiously hiding her own emotions to try and promote them to follow suit, "the trade is too big for five people to stop"

"Bull!" Ukyo growled, rather unexpectedly immediately backed up by Gos's nod; while Ryoga instead looked to an unusually thoughtful Ranma.

"True" Ranma argued, cutting through the protestations, his steel tone returning even as he looked up to meet their eyes in turn, "but we also don't need to let this one go" he said looking directly at Nabiki, his hand held out to say he wasn't finished yet. "They also have things we need," he continued, "and information" he added, clearly far from willing to entirely take the local word for the lack of Slaver agents in the area, but just as clearly finding excuses to do what tey all felt the need to do. "We made a promise" he added, raising his hand up to underline his point, his once again whole hand, even so Nabiki had to wonder whether the promise he talked of was actually one to the matriarch, or if perhaps it had been born earlier still, on a bloody morning not too far north of here.

"Okay" Nabiki replied, ignoring the urge to shiver at the returned edge in Ranma's tone that she was reasonably certain the others would have missed, and apparently willing to be swayed by their own practical needs. "We'll need a plan" she said, trying very hard indeed to reign in any sign of how much she wanted this too.

Two nights later she was wishing that she had stayed a little more detached as they had made that plan, and given a little more thought to what it would actually mean for her and Gos to be trying to keep up with the others as they ran through the night.

As they had expected the Slavers had avoided Metryll altogether, heading instead for the more direct route back towards the larger markets and avoiding the issues and taxes that might have arisen with taking their 'wares' into what was the nearest town to the Tabernacle. This had presented them with the problem that, out once more onto the Waste, there really was no cover to use to sneak up on the caravan in broad daylight and without cover they might fast lose the necessary element of surprise.

They had however quickly come up with a way around that, which is why Nabiki was currently feeling like her lungs were set to explode, forcing herself to keep putting one foot out in front of the other and continue to try and keep up with the others. Gos was cheating of course, she could hardly blame him; indeed if she had been confident enough in her own fledgling abilities he might have done the same, but that even with that he was only keeping stride with her was some small satisfaction. But even that and the quiet thought about just what all this exercise would be doing to her figure seemed little compensation right now for all the pains and the aches.

The halt, when it came took her almost completely by surprise, called as it was by the hunkering figures that only intellectually could be recognised as the three martial aritists who had been leading the group through the dark night.

While she fought for her breath they, almost silently and using a half language that seemed unique to their type of people, went over what Ranma, had seen fit to change from the plan they had made two nights ago. Apparently he had already done a preliminary recce and count of what and who they were up against.

But Nabiki was frankly more interested in getting control over her breathing, in the bottle that was being put into her hand and the cool water that was within it.

Hours ago they had left the majority of their stuff hidden at a point not far from their original camp, taking only what Ranma and Ukyo had reckoned to be the minimum necessary for survival and 'the job' they were going to do, mostly consisting of a few waterbottles and a lot of sharp things. That had undoubtedly speeded them up but had meant that Nabiki's ration of the water had never seemed enough, the desert air seeming to have sucked the wet out of her even during this night run.

Reluctantly, following a frown from Ranma who didn't seem to need to verbally remind her to take small sips rather than gulps anymore, she handed the bottle on to Gos and then went back to fighting to get her heartrate down again, recognising that she would need all her focus if she was to do her part tonight.

"It's a big group" Ryoga was saying, apparently not for the first time, a hint of concern in his voice, which in itself was more than enough to alarm Nabiki. She was far more used to the thoughtless pig-headed young man who had always charged where others feared to tread.

"Yup" Ranma agreed, further alarming her, despite a hint of levity in his agreeing tone "but not too many" he insisted, mollifying her only a little, "especially without a mage" he said and now she had to stop him. There was no way that a caravan this size would travel without one, and if they hadn't identified where he was by the time they went in…

"Without. A. Mage?" she asked, her breathing still ragged. She was only just starting to feel the chill of the desert's night air but the question wouldn't wait.

In reply Ranma lifted a small bundle he had apparently brought back with him from scouting, a small bundle on which Nabiki could make out not only some symbolic stitching, but also a dark stain, undoubtedly a mage's garment, presumably recently relieved of it's owner and it's owner of…

"Was taking a piss " Ukyo offered, her tone undisguisedly bloodthirsty even if she hadn't been the one to do the deed.

Nabiki was more surprise by her lack of revulsion than she was by the revelation, and took a few moments to wonder when exactly it had become okay in her mind for Ranma to take human lives, and then when it had become okay in his. It seemed not that long ago that this young man had been a boy concerened even about hurting beasts like Taro let alone doing anything permanent to people who manifestly deserved worse.

The answer came to her quickly enough, another thing that Ohlmin's attack had apparently cost them all. Her fist, shaking from the exertion of the long night run, clenched tight and she breathed a silent curse at him in whichever hell he now dwelt.

When she focused again they were apparently agreeing something with Gos and about to set off again, she quickly reached out to stop Ranma and asked, "No change in my part?" she checked, fighting down a not entirely unexpected swell of other thoughts, risen unbidden at the physical contact. She was still far from sure how she felt about whatever it was growing between them, but she was very sure that now was not the time.

He shook his head and squeezed her hand tight, "It worked the last times" he said, meeting her eyes and letting her know that his mind wasn't completely removed fro that first attack, or their response to it either. She would again be using the crossbow that he had acquired for her before they left, it wasn't something she was hugely comfortable with but she had taken the time to get some practice in and they were adamant that having the support would be invaluable, in case they missed anyone. They were trusting her to watch their backs in a way that they never would the younger version of her.

Soon they were off, following Ranma and, rather unexpectedly, Gos, hunkered low and small as they tried to minimise the chance of being spotted by the watchmen that Ranma had identified but not taken out when scouting. It was a bit of a tall order but Ranma had insisted it could be done and his talk about the effects of starlight on empty landscape and the tricks it played on watching eyes had meshed well with what she had practised for far less serious reasons back in Nerima.

The camp was well illuminated and even if they couldn't see the fire itself because of the very deliberate angle Ukyo was leading her and Ryoga in, then they were well aware of the dangers of the extra light in this barren landscape. A few minutes ago they had begun to crawl instead of run and the extra delay was playing merry havok with nerves that didn't exactly need reasons to be taught anyway, every passing moment seeming to stretch and every hint of movement ahead threaten to be the first sign of being rumbled.

There were a dozen crude but metal banded boxlike coaches in this train, and even more simple canvas tents, the still night wind allowing the scents of the fire, the horses and the almost trademark stench of the trade to drift randomly about the area. For Nabiki the most marked thing of all was the pounding of her heart, the telltale encroachment of her own fear. From where she was she had picked out at least a half dozen people still awake, all armed and either moving about or settled down to watch, but still no Ranma.

"Sneaky" Ukyo breathed respectfully, barely audibly, a few feet ahead of where Nabiki now lay. The middle Tendo daughter looked up to see if she could see what the chef was talking about, but came up with very little, whatever it was the Chef ahd seen was far from apparent to her less well trained senses.

Then, to her surprise Ukyo stood up completely, standing out suddenly like the proverbial sore thumb amid the plain, moonlit landcape, and soon Ryoga was joining her. The only explanation she got was a pointed finger that showed a figure up by one of the wagons unmistakably waving his pigtail and waving them on, another less identifiable robed figure next to him presumably having to be Gos.

"He must have used Gos to clear this whole side" Ukyo offered, reaching out to catch Ryoga's wrist before he headed off on his own and risked becoming completely lost in the night desert. "Made them stay up some how too" she added, clearly unsure how that had been done, "we better hurry" she said and Nabiki nodded, wondering why she hadn't thought of that, before realising that she had, only she had discarded the idea after Gos had argued about how close he would have had to be, apparently Ranma had gotten around that, and Go's objections to being so out on a limb.

When she reached the wagon the others were hiding behind she saw just how Ranma had achieved it and was perhaps less comfortable still than she had been when he had shown her the mage's bundle; the nearest guard was still sat bolt upright, but had a neat red, leaky hole in the middle of his chest, his eyes fixed and staring in the way only the cooling dead could manage.

She looked to Gos, who in turn looked positively sick. "Necromancy" he said, his tone saying that sick had been the right word, "not quite" he quickly qualified "but close enough" he said, his cheeks bulging as he fought down another urge to chuck. Meanwhile Ranma patted him on the back, smiling and apparently oblivious to the distaste, and waved a few more of those hand signals to Ukyo and Ryoga, before pointing to Nabiki and then to the top of the wagon.

She nodded an understanding and began climbing, filing away this latest change with all the others tat had been assaulting her recently, promising she'd take the time to analyse it when she had the time, like when she wasn't next to a camp full of people of Ohlmin's ilk.

Meanwhile the three martial artists were spreading out, Ukyo and Ranma circling around the camp perimeter to complete the job they had started and Ryoga forcing himself to stay calm as he took the place of one of the sentries on this side. Nabiki was soon in a position to see at least some of this as she lay down on the top of the caravan and pressed her re-checked crossbow to her shoulder, the cool hard wood scant comfort to her still frayed nerves.

From up there the camp looked no less worrisome than it had from afar, there were a lot of people here, presumably originally needed to capture and escort the even larger number of prisoners. A good many of those guards had chosen to forgo full tents and just rigged simple pole and tarp lean-tos. For the life of her Nabiki couldn't see how Ranma and the others were going to deal with this many, let alone without getting someone killed in the process.

She, perhaps more than anyone, knew how good they were, she had been setting odds on them for years, but she also knew that confidence was part of what made them as good as they were. Not accepting the chance of defeat was part and parcel of striving to be the best, but you could do precious little arguing when you were dead because you bit off more than you could chew. Amazing martial arts aside there really were only five of them.

Nor was she so much of a fool to count herself as even close to as useful in a situation like this as even Gos with his newfound magics might be. One bolt was hardly going to make that much of a difference.

Then it started


End file.
